Inertia
by Ms. Terrible Frostbite
Summary: As civilians and criminals across the globe are suddenly and inexplicably being granted amazing ability, one of the original seven must learn to contend with crippling normalcy. Post Divided We Fall
1. Chapter 1: Velocity 9

** Inertia**

Author: Ms. Terrible Frostbite

Disclaimer: JLU, all heroes and villains are owned by someone who is very, very lucky and probably very, very rich. This person also happens to not be myself. Also, the original concept of this fic was taken from one of the Flash comics. I have jerry-rigged and made it to my liking and to fit the show and to not . .be . . you know. .copying the comic . . . No infringement is intended; I just do this because I have a lot of free time.

Rating: PG-13 -- For language, violence, adult situations (whatever that means) and . . stuff. May go up. Who knows.

Pairings: Pretty much going to be canon.

Post Divided We Fall, pre I Am Legion

** Chapter One**

* * *

"You got the stuff?" 

It seemed such a ridiculous, cliche, popped-out-of-a-90's-Bruce-Willis movie line to Cutler Davis that he almost blew their cover, overtaken by the suddenly violent need to punch the younger, pig-nosed man right in his huge, upturned snout.

"Of course I got the stuff," he snapped. "What is this, you're first deal? You little pip-squeak, you think I'm some kinda chump?" Something about his little beady swine face made Cutler fall into the same action film jargon -- he would have never otherwise said 'chump' in his life. "I'll take my business and go if that's the way you want to play it, you little skid-mark."

"No, no." Jason, or Jeff, or Rick or something's tongue slid across his lower lip, making it sparkle in the dim yellow light of the parking garage lamp. A three story, winding parking garage, abandoned in the late hour. Cutler had been around the block. No tall buildings a little nuisance could suddenly pop off of with his tight little spandexed ass.

Plenty of dark corners, though. Cutler patted his pockets unconsciously, dark eyes shifting to the recesses of the concrete structure. Plenty of dark corners, but that was all this city seemed to be.

"No." Rick or something repeated, dragging a hand crowded with sausage fingers across his mouth, the spittle disappearing with it; the same hand redirecting to smooth his thinning hair. A small smile touched the corners of his eager mouth."I heard, you know . . I heard this shit is good."

The corner of Cutler's lips turned up in a mocking sneer. "Only the best."

The stocky, two hundred fifty pound, six foot two man turned to his Civic -- a piece of junk that was going to be gone tomorrow, hopefully, if this deal went according to plan, replaced by a Jag or something equally as beautiful (Rick was some sort of stockbroker, he knew that much) -- and popped the trunk. An emergency roadside bag, a jack, and a simple black briefcase were revealed in the pale, flickering overhead light.

Cutler took the cool handle of the case and when he turned around, Ricky-boy was reaching into his jacket. For a moment the large man froze, thinking that lard-o was going to pop out with a .9 mm but Ricky soon pulled his fist back into view, and what was clutched in those little piggy fingers was definitely flat, definitely green, definitely thick as a brick in the dim light. Cutler had never paid attention in school but he knew enough to see that neither Abe, Andy or Georgie Porgie were on those bills.

The swap was quick, smooth; he had actually touched the face of Benny Frank before a black boot crushed his jawbone with a sound similar to breaking fresh snow; a fist shattered three of his ribs and drove all the air from his lungs and Cutler was thrown into unconsciousness with only the thought _Pig musta ratted me out_

The Batman reached down and tied Cutler's hands behind his back, his feet for good measure. They were old acquaintances, and the Bat knew his tricks. The man a few feet away, spread eagle with a rising welt on his brow, however, was unfamiliar. Batman knew the unconscious man was wearing at least fifteen hundred dollar suit; Bruce Wayne, however, had never met him. Unlikely, if he were local or high echelon.

A quick search yielded a leather wallet in his left lapel -- California license. An out of towner.

"Ramone Peasly." The name rang no bells. And other than the thirty thousand in his hand there was nothing on his person, save the keys to a rented Nissan parked maybe fifty meters away.

Bruce restrained him as well, not bothering with anything more than zip ties on his thick wrists. Inches from where the man's limp, fat hand had lain was a simple plastic briefcase, tagged with a masking tape label, print in magic marker.

"Velocity 9." Sirens blared floors beneath, outside the red and white lights reflected on the surrounding buildings. There was a lock on the case, a cheap one -- the Dark Knight could have dispatched it at the age of eleven.

Three layers of thick black mesh lined the briefcase's inner cavity, not unlike the kind that would cradle expensive photographic or electrical equipment. Instead there were syringes. Dozens of them, lined in military foam trenches. All filled to the brim with a clear liquid.

"Over here!" The Batman stepped away, fading back into shadow, a syringe securely in his grasp.

* * *

He had just reached the corner of Main and MLK and punched the crosswalk button when a Honda Civic blew the light and T-boned a green VW bug with a ferocious metal scream. The two skid in a yoked ballet before slamming into the traffic pole opposite the man, bringing the light down at his feet with a terrific bang. 

"Aww, _man!_" Wally West groaned and glanced around, considered bailing for half a second. It was four minutes to the hour, and he was totally going to miss Heroes.

"Should have teleported home." It had been a hard day, full of runaway tour buses full of Japanese tourists (Frash, you taka peecha?), robbed banks, super valuable somethings stolen from a maximum security something else, topped off with enough grown men prancing around in spandex for _West Side Story On Ice_. All of this handled on too little sleep -- monitor duty from midnight to four, and then, since his good friend Ralph Dibny hadn't shown, till eight.

_ Pressing detective business my ass_

Plus a full day at work. And he _would _have been home by now, obliterating boxes of Cap'n Crunch and vegging on The Greatest Show Ever -- leaving this shenanigan to the normal cops -- had he not decided that an unfamiliar back alley a few blocks down from the Lab was a good place to give his favorite Martian a call.

He'd been half-way through "J'onn," when he felt a drizzle on his head. He had looked up to see the dubious, puckered face of an ancient woman a few stories above, watering the pansies that hung from flower boxes off the wrought iron railing of her deck. So concentrated was she on her eavesdropping that she was completely missing the flowers.

A woman had just seen him duck into a back alley, touch his ear and talk to himself.

Pretty high on the 'Yeah, Probably Not Good' meter.

"J'onn," had transformed into: "Jjjj--George Clooney!" The only man who could talk to himself in back alleys and be quickly written off as bonkers came instantly to mind. "Uh, yeah! George Clooney! Oceans Eleven the leading cause of athletes foot! The Moon Landing is fake! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BIG RED GUM?!"

And then he had run off, clawing his hair and screaming.

Wally glanced around nervously, as if he were expecting a news crew to suddenly pop out from behind a newspaper stand, Oh-Em-Gee! It's Wally West, better known as The Flash (capital T, capital F)! _Hopefully it was enough for old bag to think I'm loony and not a super . . hero . . or . . you know . . anything else like that._

Okay. So it sounded kind of stupid and unnecessary now. Nevertheless, in a world of security cameras, watchful eyes and suspicion, the event had left him a little paranoid.

_ Whatever happened to phone booths?_

He _could_ have just run home in his civvies. High speeds made it so people could only see him as a blur, but he was on a tight budget already. He couldn't exactly afford to keep replacing his melted shoes. Converses were expensive, and the kid in Famous Footwear was starting to give him funny looks every time he came in.

So he was walking. Had been walking.

Smoke was rising from beneath the Honda's hood and what might have been oil or gas or hell, washer fluid dribbled from beneath the car in a steady stream. With a sigh, Wally started over.

Super hero responsibility and all that. Uncle Barry had beaten it into him with a jackhammer.

The speedster whimpered pathetically, checked his cell phone clock again while dialing 9-1-1. Three minutes. He really needed to invest in a TiVo. Maybe GL was taping it. Hopefully, though that old codger only had a VCR (he knew the dude had been off Earth for ten years . . but really, he'd been back for three and it was just getting sad) and Wally only had a DVD player. Which meant he'd have to watch it over there . . and Vixen would probably be there . .

Not that he had a problem with Vixen.

Or anything.

Right?

Right.

He liked her.

Really.

He just didn't like Vixen _and_ GL.

Together.

Viantern

Grixen

or was it Marohn?

. . Jari?

_ "Ohhhhh, my neck!"_

Car accident. Right. Limbs weren't on the ground, there wasn't a super villain in sight; plainclothes Flash could probably handle it. Plus, changing would take time, and then there might be

_ (LindaPark)_

media and all that junk, whereas, _Wally West_ might only miss the recap by being a _good samaritan_.

Quote unquote.

Not a _super-hero_.

See, and everyone thought he was dumb.

There was no one else on the street, but in the flaxen evening light Wally could see a few people craning their heads to look from the cafe almost next door. He muttered the address to the emergency dispatcher as he approached; a man who had been walking his Labrador tied the dog's leash to a parking meter and also started towards the scene. Someone was moaning. Wally quickened his pace into a jog.

There was a woman in the Honda, a teenager in the bug.

_ Might as well go for the closest. _

"Hey babe, what's up?" The front of the car looked as if someone had taken a giant sledgehammer to it, the hood bent upwards in a sloppy M and both the headlights busted out. She, however, seemed relatively unharmed, save a slightly bleeding nose.

"It was yellow I swear to God it was."

"Nah, that was a pretty red shade of yellow from what I saw." She looked up from the deflated carcass of the airbag. He grinned his trademark, goofy grin (_she's pretty, with those big blue eyes and all_) and pulled the door open. "Now lets get you out before our first date takes place somewhere in China."

She stood up and he reached to steady her, "Easy there," catching her as she swayed unsteadily. Time tested, golden pick-up lines were racing through his mind as she fell against him, one hand resting by his neck, the other pressing what he hoped she realized was a very toned muscle of his chest.

"What's your name, gorgeous?" More people were approaching, sirens wailed in the distance. The teenager was being told to sit tight by Mr. Labrador. Wally didn't notice.

"Veronica." Pretty blonde Veronica smiled. Something about the smile made Wally bristle, made his eyebrow cock and his muscles steel. It wasn't the appreciative smile of a rescued victim--

_he vaguely realized that the hand on his shoulder was moving, moving far more quickly than a normal person's should or could and there was something in it_

--but the small, sly smile of a child who's done something naughty.

Sharp pain exploded in his neck and he staggered back, clawing at his throat, choking on the air suddenly caught in his lungs. Veronica, pretty blonde Veronica was still smiling.

_ "Nighty night, fastest man alive."_

Plastic. Long Plastic. He grabbed it and wrenched it out.

A syringe. The plunger all the way compressed.

The world spun under his feet. The needle fell from his fingers, clattered against the asphalt as he fell.

He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

* * *

Hmm, that seemed a little . .rushed . .to me. Anyways . . 

Thanks! Hope you enjoyed. Reviews are appreciated


	2. Chapter 2: In A Heartbeat

A/N: Hey guys! Thanks for those who reviewed. Anyways, still don't own it.

More Wally this chapter, but I'll get into fight and romance scenes probably next chapter . . I hope. Fingers crossed.

**Inertia**

**Chapter Two: In A Heartbeat  
**

* * *

_"Hey, is he okay?"_

_"Hey kid, you alright?"_

Wally opened his eyes slowly, blinked once, twice, pushed himself up slowly. _Where am I? _His neck felt like someone was putting out a cigarette on it. A sickle of people surrounded him, looking down at him like he was at the bottom of a well. Most attempted to stop him from rising with various gestures.

"The paramedics'll be here soon, son." An elderly gentlemen stated _(Mr. Labrador?)_, resting a hard hand on Wally's shoulder, aiming to ease him back to repose. "Hang on until then."

_Paramedics . . ?_ Glass littered the pavement, sparkled like fairy dust. Cones loomed as proud orange guardsmen not far away. Twisted metal fragments littered the street, leading up to the distorted forms of a VW bug and a white Honda.

_What?_

His head hurt, hurt, felt thick, like he needed to go home and rinse it out with Drano. He couldn't think, couldn't understand--

"Veronica." _Who the hell is--?_ "Where's . ."

_"_You've just been in a car accident--"

"No!" Wally shook his head. Coherent thought was beginning to infiltrate his aching skull, shifting aside masses of fog for precious seconds of clarity. "Not me. A girl. Blonde." It was coming more quickly. He waved absently at his own head, as if to get the hair point more deftly across. "Blue eyes. Said her name was Veronica. She was driving the--"

He trailed off at their puzzled looks.

"Son, you better lay back down, there was no--"

Wally replied by jumping to his feet. It made him suddenly very, very dizzy and blood started pounding cannon blasts in his head; he did his best to ignore it.

"No, no. It wasn't--" They were looking at him dubiously; he waved a weak hand. "Thanks, but . . ." He turned and walked away. A few called after him. He ignored them.

By the time he reached his apartment he was oozing a hot, sick sweat, shakes that would have registered on a Richter Scale tore through his weak muscles; the staircase before him shuffled between fishbowl distortion and distorted fun-house kaleidoscope. Six flights. Nothing for the fastest man alive. Wally West suddenly felt a better alternative lay down of the cheap welcome mat and die. Hanging on the handle, he began to drag himself up the flight.

After gaining his speed in that accident in his uncle's lab (_had he been twelve or thirteen? Fourteen maybe? He couldn't . . couldn't remember) _he had lived his life completely sickness free. The everyday illnesses were no match for his metabolism -- his body could respond and wipe out a virus or whatever else before he even got the sniffles. Great for a crime fighter -- crummy if he was trying to get out of an exam. It had been so long he had forgotten what being sick was like.

After an eternity, Wally reached his door and let himself in with trembling hands. He was hungry, starving but too tired, too damn bone tired to do anything about it so he just collapsed into his bed, shivering, simultaneously freezing and boiling and blood was thrashing through his veins so quickly so violently to keep pace with his rabbit heart it _hurt--_

_Call the league. _A small voice said. _There's something wrong. _ What had that girl said? It seemed like it was important, very important for him to remember but he couldn't . . couldn't quite . . She had . . what had she . .

_God his neck HURT_

It had only been a few weeks since the Speed Force. If he called them now, they would take care of little Wally, who had stepped in shoes too big for his feet and tried to run a marathon; they would strap him to a table and poke and prod him for another god knows how long, all in the name of his health, of his safety.

_They were the ones who pulled me back who saved _(killed) _me_

He didn't get the chance. Blackness bloomed a terrible flower that ate away the surrounding room, and he slept.

* * *

"Wally!" John frowned, pounding on the door for the umpteenth time, "Open the damn door, I know you're in there!" In all actuality, he didn't. Wally could be in Tibet, the diner down the street or deep space for all he knew -- this what Mr. McGee called an 'educated guess'. One that he was going to feel like an idiot for if it turned out the speedster wasn't actually home. 

All he really knew was Wally hadn't shown up for monitor duty in two days and couldn't be reached on his communicator or phone. It wasn't unlike the speedster to be late (ridiculously so, for being so fast) or to forget to put in his communicator every once in a while -- hell, they all did -- but the prolonged absence of the Flash was an outright rarity. The kid, even on his vacations or off-days, always stopped by the WatchTower at least once a day to score a free meal and socialize. But no one had seen hide or hair of him, even heard anything concerning him in the past couple days. So he was here, Green Lantern of sector 2814, banging on the door. Because, though he would never admit it aloud, John was a little bit worried about the hotshot.

He beat on the cheap wood door like a war drum for a few more seconds before he heard the slight but definite sound of shuffling in the apartment, the scratching of the lock being undone. He was shouting before the door was even all the way open.

_"Where the hell have you been?! We've been calling you for two days, looking for your sorry ass, you missed your monitor duty and half a dozen missions--!"_

_"_Two days?" The heels of Wally's hands were pressed against his eyes; he pulled them away and John broke off, furrowing his eyes in concern, tone falling in octave and intensity.

"Wally?" The speedster's face was thin, hollow, too pale -- his eyes sunken and cheek bones protruding like daggers. His clothes were rumpled, looked slept in, hung limply off his thin frame. "Wally, what's wrong with you?"

"What day is it?" There was a dazed, confused look in his filmy eyes. He took a step forward and stumbled, John reached to catch him as he fell against the door frame.

"Wally? _Wally!"_ John wrapped one of Wally's listless arms around his shoulders, beginning to touch his earpiece. The speedster was unconscious against him, his whole body pitching back and forth in the slightest to--

John redirected his hand to press against the speedster's chest. His heart was slamming against his ribs like a caged, rabid animal, throbbing so quickly the Lantern couldn't discern a singular beat.

"Two for emergency pick-up. Have medical staff on emergency standby."

* * *

Bruce Wayne had a million things to do. Charity events needed organizing, the books needed rewriting to explain away new gaps caused by his hobbies, and he'd been corralled by some high society bimbo (Something with an A . . Alice . . Amber . . or was it a J . .) into attending a grand opening of . . something. A Bank or a Museum. One of the two. 

And ever since the League began, he'd been relying heavily on his VP, Lucius Fox, to pick up his slack with Wayne Enterprises. Lucius was a good man and knew from the get-go that Thomas Wayne's son was more playboy than entrepreneur, but Bruce had started to spend less and less of his already frugal time at the office and more in the headquarters of his _other_ profession. It hadn't taken long for Bruce to notice the tired look etched deeply and constantly into his associate's features, the dark bags under his eyes.

He'd sent the man on vacation. Now, skyscrapers of papers that needed authorizing, reading, signing, and who knew what else held a silent vigil at the corner of his desk. There were twenty-five messages from his stock broker, most of them screaming about a buyer's market.

On the other hand, Gotham was as filthy as ever, infested with as many criminals as there were cockroaches. The Riddler had escaped Arkham, Joker had made one of his frequent television threats, and a gang brawl had exploded on the East side of the city, leaving four dead.

And it wasn't even dark yet.

_"Batman."_

"Busy."

_"Bruce."_ First names were usually categorized under 'emergency only', (though Clark tended to invoke them in private in attempts at chumminess) most especially over the often populated, open airways of commlinks. Bruce paused, figuring Clark hadn't called to ask him if he wanted to play cards.

"What?"

_"Somethings happened."  
_

* * *

Bruce rested his head on his propped arms, closed his eyes. 

Congestive heart failure.

The three words screamed over and over again in his mind in an ambulance wail. John had found Wally in his apartment in some state of distress, cause unknown. By the time they were teleported to the WatchTower, Wally's heart had been beating so fast it registered as a flat line.

It had taken them almost a minute to realize when his heart actually stopped.

"_He's on a respirator and the doctors are throwing anything they can think of at him, but it's not helping. He's comatose. There's . . . there's an incision mark on his neck. Someone . . . or something . . . attacked him._

_"He hasn't been on a mission in over a week, Bruce. Someone . . . someone must have . . . How did they know who he was?. . . How could they?"_

Clark had sent him down copies of the speedster's bloodwork and he'd examined them without much luck. No heavy metal poisoning or any other toxins a basic test could identify, not that he had figured on it. Wally's system was so fast it would take a swimming pool of arsenic before it killed him. If it was some sort of engineered disease, it could take years before . . .

And he wasn't a doctor, and he didn't know. Clark assured him the best medical minds were on the case. He had his doubts.

And what if it wasn't something medical?

He physically turned himself away from the thought. It was preposterous, of course; there was nothing to indicate the Speed Force--

The League was on red alert, the buddy system mandatory for all active missions. Off-duty and reserve members were being made to check in every two hours.

Clark said he was sending someone down to the cave. Bruce told him not to bother. Tim was playing video games upstairs; he'd already called Dick and Barbara and apprised them of the situation and both were heading over. He hadn't given any details, wasn't sure how he was going to. Dick and Wally had been like brothers since they were Tim's age; Bruce wasn't sure the younger man was going to accept anything close to paternal compassion from him. _Contemptuous waters are often the hardest to bridge,_ he though with a grimace.

Bruce lifted his head, leaned his mouth against his linked fingers, eyes downcast and distant. He'd already sent an e-mail to the Central City Police Department, explaining one Wally West had been recalled to testify in a case he had worked on during an internship for the Gotham PD. The case and school records had been easy to forge, easier to hack into the Department's records and CCU to plant. He'd then transferred sixty-five hundred dollars into the speedster's checking account and set up allotments for his bills -- in case they were in this for the long haul. More could be added later, if necessary.

He didn't want to think about that.

A beeping went off in a corner of the room, he looked up. On a far mounted screen, Dick, in civilian clothes, getting off his motorcycle and approaching the front door of the manor. His eyes were sliding back to the computer monitor when he saw it.

It had been nearly a month since the parking garage bust -- a bust he hadn't even been anticipating. The tip he'd gotten had been for an attempted robbery on the shopping district, one that never conspired -- that night, at least. As far as he knew, Cutler Davis and Ramon Peasly were now rotting in cells at the Gotham State Penitentiary for trafficking and possession of a controlled substance.

Velocity 9. The sample still sat on the stainless steel table, not so much forgotten as postponed, pushed aside for more pressing matters: the analyzing of a new chemical used by Scarecrow; a new laughing gas from the Joker; a residue left at the scene of a robbery suspected to have been committed by Killer Croc. New, longer-lasting patches had to be made for the Creeper to keep him at least looking normal, though getting him to stop removing them prematurely was a feat of its own.

There hadn't been anything in the news since concerning the drug -- if it was even that, though the name and circumstances of the sale clearly implied something illicit. There wasn't a breath of it in the loops he surrounded himself with -- both the higher end of the social spectrum and the lower. His informants, if they knew of it, were staying mum. Every drug raid since had been the normal culprits -- cocaine, meth, heroine. Enough pot to fill a gymnasium.

Something about the whole situation, however, felt like the calm before the storm. He doubted that the bust would be the last he saw of Velocity 9, and the misgiving hope that he had nipped this at the infection sight was too ignorant a thought for the bleak alleys of his city.

Bruce considered the syringe carefully, stood from his seat and retrieved it from the stand he had carefully placed it in that night and failed to touch since. Nevertheless, all his suspicions aside, there was nothing linking this and Wally. Nothing at all. As far as he knew, neither criminal had even heard of Central City, and neither had had a previous run in with the city's own crime fighter. Ramon Peasly was a private investing consultant from Santa Barbara and owned a spotless record prior to this; Cutler made his rent running with Gotham's worst as a hired gun and thug.

But there was still a line, an inexplicable connection between A and B that had yet to be justified, one that refused to bow to his logic.

He touched his earpiece, simultaneously retrieving a clear plastic slide. There were tests to run, and he would have to use the smallest amount possible. Once the contents of the syringe were exhausted, he would have to be done.

"Clark, get in touch with the Question."

* * *

It still feels like I'm moving really quickly . . which is good, I guess . . hmmm . . 

I'm thinking about changing this to M for the drug references . . but I don't think it will get that bad. .

Anyways, review!


	3. Chapter 3: Reaction

A/N: Thank you everyone, for the wonderful reviews! You guys are amazing! I'm sorry this chapter took so long but I've recently located to one of only . . three? . . states that starts with an O. It's much nicer here. Except we're in the boonies, so I have to use crappy Sprint for Internet ( . . .) and it won't work on my laptop, because it's a Mac (. . .) so I have to use our slow as hell desktop . . (weep)

Sorry. I'm whining.

On with the fic!

**Inertia**

**Chapter Three: Reaction**

"_Take him off everything except the respirator."_

"Bruce--"

"_Has he started seizing yet?"_

"Bruce--"

Fiercely: _"Has he started seizing yet?"_

"No."

"_Good. I don't even want him on saline. Get every IV, tube, whatever out of him. If I'm right, he should be awake within the next twenty-four hours."_

"And if you're wrong?"

Silence.

"Bruce--"

"_I'm not wrong."_

* * *

The air duct above them hissed, broke the silence. It would go for fifteen minutes to the second, then quit for half an hour. Clark's eyes had hardly moved from the clock since he entered, and the systems were nothing if precise.

A transparent sheet of plastic separated the two, cornered off part of the room into a temporary, hermetically sealed compartment. There were plenty of similar cells in the bowels of the Watchtower for criminals awaiting transport, or those too dangerous to hold on earth (Kalibak, being one). This, however, was a converted sickbay room, meaning the plastic was an effective divider but otherwise flimsy – either man could have broken through it in a second, the captive with a half hearted energy blast, the outsider with a sneeze.

"If he dies, it's my fault."

"John." The Lantern was sitting on the pristine hospital bed in the far corner, arms on his thighs, staring into his hands.

"Of all people, I should have known there was something wrong."

"We _all _should have." The metal foldout chair Clark sat in was uncomfortable but he wasn't complaining. Being here was better than being with Wally, watching the laser lines of nameless machinery rise and fall, his chest rise and fall with stuttering, artificial breath, waiting for something to happen. _Praying_ for something to happen with a mixture of anxious hope and petrifying dread. Clark didn't know how long he stayed with the speedster but was sure his blood pressure had shot up a dozen points, had felt the frantic grip of hypertension slowly squeezing at the beat of his heart.

Silence. The chair squeaked beneath him as he shifted. The vent cut out.

"Do you feel any different?"

"No." And there were laser lines here too, dancing across a small black screen that was half metallic panel built right into the plastic wall, reading from patch sensors on the Lantern's skin. These lines were steady, normal, silent, peaking in jagged mountains and dipping in fissures that were entirely orderly and predictable.

"Is that good or bad?" The Lantern's words were dark and bitterly sarcastic. It was lost on the bigger man.

"I don't know." Clark shrugged helplessly. It wasn't something he was used to doing and he didn't enjoy it; it must have looked terribly awkward from the expression on John's face. "Good in that we aren't going to be hooking you up to a respirator too, bad since it proves whatever Wally has isn't some sort of engineered disease . . . a communicable one, at least."

"Some type of poison?" Another shrug. John's jaw worked in frustration.

"Has Bruce come up with anything?" Clark hesitated. In accordance with the Dark Knight's 'request', every chemical being pumped into the speedster's system had been removed. It was absurdly against medical advice and Bruce was in no way qualified as a physician . . . Clark didn't know if he'd saved Wally's life or signed his death warrant. That had been twelve hours ago, and not much had changed with the speedster's condition. Something told him John wouldn't appreciate this piece of information.

And Shayera was on her way from a mission in some far quadrant of the galaxy, due back any minute. They hadn't told her _anything_.

Mouth open, mind faltering for some sort of decent reply (knowing nearly everyone on the Tower could tell when he was lying) Clark didn't have the chance to answer.

_Superman_

_Yes, J'onn?_

_Wally has awakened._

* * *

It never failed to surprise Diana that the back entrance to the cave remained open, that after the Thanagarian Invasion Bruce had not found a way to close it -- or had not chosen to. _Maybe we've gotten further under his skin than he lets on. _The thought put a smile on her face as she landed on the main level of the cave with only the smallest of sounds.

"What are you doing here?" It was more a declaration of trespass than a question, issued in the same deadpan tone usually reserved for the gangsters and petty thieves of Gotham City.

_Maybe not. _Diana frowned, crossed her arms, pushing aside the worming hurt that infiltrated her chest without completely succeeding. He hadn't even turned around, gaze locked on the massive computer screen before him.

She had not been invited. Bruce had declined a partner for what Clark so aptly dubbed 'The Buddy System' but she had volunteered her services anyways, one man none the wiser and the other boyishly puzzled.

_What's going on between you two? _Clark's look had asked.

Diana wished she knew. Things had changed, apparently. The soft looks she sometimes caught, the coy flirting, the companionable silences they often shared had vanished overnight and Bruce was acting as if they had never existed at all. He was casually dismissive at the talk of personal plans. Her monitor duty, coincidentally, no longer intersected with his. Ever. He was always, somehow, otherwise indisposed when she called him for a mission – busy with what he called his 'first priority.'

Even thinking about it made her blood boil, made her face hot with anger. As if she were some infatuated child! Some foolish girl who had misread signals _and he was doing his best not to encourage her!_

And yet . . .

The sounds of her steps against the stone floor were hollow and lonely; they echoed and rebounded against the damp stalactites of the cave as she closed the distance between them.

"You're commlink is off, we haven't been able to reach you," _I was worried about you, _"We thought something might have happened," _I wanted to make sure you were okay._

He finally turned as she came up to his seated side. The lenses of his cowl narrowed slightly; she could tell beneath his mask he was raising an eyebrow.

Diana ignored it. She had long before developed immunity to the trademark Bat Glare.

"What's this?" The mask's lenses remained white slits for a moment longer (trying to decode her interntions, no doubt) before he turned back to panel. The computer screen was occupied with graphs and charts with wavering lines, beneath them an arrayed list of chemicals, their components and descriptions. She stood close to him, leaned into the desk for a better look, her hip almost touching his shoulder.

"Is that--?" His black clad fingers danced across the keys, the monitor cut to blackness. He pushed his chair back, stood. She retreated a step, watched him cross to one of the many stainless steel tables scattered across the cave. Just as she was beginning to think herself dismissed he spoke in the same low tone.

"Velocity 9." She approached carefully. Beneath the suspended strip emitting harsh florescent light were two boxes. The first appeared to contain a wadded up towel. The second was empty.

Diana frowned as she came closer. The bunched white thing in the first box was . . . _moving. _Buzzing, almost, with a sort of beehive activity. Her lip curled in realization.

Rats. Big rats, maybe a dozen, white as snow with eyes that looked like tiny rubies. They slithered and crawled over each other, plump bodies moving in chaotic tides that throbbed and ebbed as they scrabbled with pink, scaly feet at the clear walls confining them. Their long, naked tails looked like stretched worms.

Bruce retrieved a syringe from a stand not far from the cages, its plunger just barely extended, tubing containing the smallest traces of liquid.

"That's what Wally was injected with." Not a question but he confirmed her assumption with a curt not.

Bruce removed the cover of the first box with his other hand and set it to the side, reaching down and grabbed one of the fat rodents. It slid out of his grasp. He snatched another around the midsection. It twisted like a beached trout in his gloved hand, writhing and biting with four yellow teeth.

"What are you--?" With precision, Bruce slid the needle into the back of the rat's neck. It instantly went limp in his grasp. He placed its lifeless body in the second box, closed the lid tightly.

"Watch." She didn't, for a moment. Her eyes were on him, wondering why he had withdrawn behind the door that left him so closed to her now. With a weary sigh she turned. Business, then. At least it was something.

The rat laid there, the only obvious sign it wasn't dead the heaving of its sides in labored breaths. It was still for maybe a minute. Diana was about to comment when it happened.

The rat stood suddenly, its jaw working, open and shut, open and shut, eyes bulging like little drops of blood. It started to run – slowly, at first, around and around the confines of the plastic cage in an insane carousel. It got faster, quickly. Faster, until it was nothing but a white blur and there was a low whine like the sound of a spinning turbine. Diana could feel the vibrations of it in the backs of her eyeballs, in her teeth.

The box clattered off the table with enormous force, cracked; the top popped off and the rat disappeared into the darkness of the cave as a white streak.

Diana's mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide. She started after it.

"Wait."

"Bruce--"

"We won't be able to find it for another two hours, maybe three. It would take Clark to catch it now."

Diana looked back at him, shaking her head slowly. "I don't understand. That thing--"

"--has super speed. Because of that drug." He tipped his head at the now empty syringe. The needle cast a somehow sinister L-shaped shadow across the table's metal surface. "The slowest I've clocked one at is Mach 2."

All of this was moving too fast, too much. Diana blinked rapidly, trying to process the information overload. "But, Wally--"

"Will be fine, more than likely, if they took him off the medications before any neurological damage could be caused." At her apparent confuson he continued, "They adjusted the doses to account for his high metabolism. The coma, every complication, was being caused by an extreme overdose."

And then everything stopped as the words slowly sank it, as everything cleared away and the lock clicked into place. "Hera." She murmured. "You can't mean . . ."

Bruce nodded gravely. Diana felt the sudden and intense need to sit down.

"You said we could find that rat in two hours." She heard herself ask. "Why two hours?"

"It will take that long for it to use up its' fat reserves or internal water supply. When we find it, it'll be dead."

* * *

Wally certainly still looked unconscious when Clark shot into the room. Any semblance of the once stringent quarantine had been abandoned – the HazMat suits were still hanging on their handles by the door. The plastic boundary that mirrored the one in the Lantern's room was gone, removed to make room for the crowd of physicians.

The speedster's skin was the color of carved marble and he was just as still, purple bruises trailing up his arms where IVs had previously rooted, one still remained – saline, the lowest drip allowed by the equipment. An hour after the original was removed Wally's blood pressure had started a downward slide. They compromised. The poker red incision mark on his neck was covered with a square patch of gauze.

Two nurses pulled the respirator from Wally's mouth like a sword-eater removing a saber; the clear tube came straight and thick and impossibly long. An oxygen mask replaced it. Wally's smooth expression was undisturbed, body flaccid beneath their hands.

Clark pushed through the throng of doctors and came up on J'onn's side. The Martian had a single green hand on Wally's brow, his eyes glowing a placid yellow.

"Is he--?"

"Yes." J'onn removed his hand and his eyes faded back to their usual burnt orange color. "I sense his mind gaining ground." He looked at Clark with a pensive exression. "His liver and kidney functions have also returned to normal."

Clark nodded. Not for the first time, he was glad Bruce was always right.

_It may be weeks before he regains full consciousness, Clark. If he does at all._

_I know. _That was something Clark learned quickly in their line of work: Hollywood was Hollywood. Rarely do coma patients pop out of sleep with every hair in place; seldom do knocks on the head create true amnesia and when someone's fingers jump after they die, it means their nerves were taking their time in following – not that a physician made a terribly inaccurate call.

Clark drew sharply back to the present as the lids of Wally's blood bruised eyes began to flutter. The doctors, who had been talking quietly amongst each other, fell into silence. Papers stopped shuffling. Someone tried telling Clark to back up. His glare was nowhere near as refined as Batman's, but it did the job.

"Wally?" The speedster's eyes slid open, slivers of watery white amost sterling against the gray quality of his skin. Wally blinked once, eyes opening the rest of the way, his pupils pulling back in dilation from their blue-green irises.

"Supes?" The voice broke off into a scratchy cough, but by god, it was Wally's, and he wasn't a vegetable. Clark felt the breath he didn't know he was holding escape him, his face falling ino a relieved beam.

"How are you feeling?"

Wally sat up.

It caused nearly all of them to stagger back in shock. J'onn was quick to put a hand on the speedster's thin shoulder.

"Wally, I don't think it's wise—" But Wally wasn't listening. He pulled his arm from beside him and was staring at his open hand with a cocked head and a frown. He waved his palm in front of his face slowly, agonizingly slow for him, then a little faster, then slowly again, the IV swaying like a clear kite's tail. Clark's, all of their eyes, watched his hand like a cobra watching a charmer's flute as Wally waved it, turned it over, waved it again.

"Wally--" Clark glanced over at J'onn beside him but the Martian was stone faced, and Clark got the clear impression something terrible was happening. _He's lost his mind, please let this be the side effect of a drug or—_"Wally, what--?"

"It's gone." Wally said in the same hoarse voice that made him hard to understand, and for a minute, Clark didn't. Wally repeated the words to himself slowly, uncomprehendingly, shaking his head in confusion. He snapped his fingers, blinked twice in shock as whatever he was expecting to happen didn't.

"My speed. It's gone."

* * *

"Dirty baaabe, you see these shackles—"

It wasn't intricate, not electric or numeric. Just an average lock, the same as four billion others set into various homes and businesses across the nation. It was the kind of lock he learned to open with a credit card from an episode of Johnny Quest when he was ten.

He had suspected the malevolence of credit cards then, but was too young to understand the crippling gravity of it. And for Johnny Quest, it would be years before he learned of the blonde boy's means as communication between Columbian drug cartels and major shoe brands.

"Baby I'm your slaaave—"

He didn't own a credit card. For many, many reasons. Days worth of reasons. He tried explaining it to Helena and she had fallen asleep the fifth hour in.

He suspected she stopped listening after maybe the third.

"I'll let you whip me if I misbehaaaave—"

Uncoiling one of the two bobby pins he always kept in his left lapel, he stuck the hair accessory into the keyhole. Still not completely clean, but the lesser of the two evils. He could go on for years about the little plastic balls at the tips. Keep you from scratching your scalp?

That's just what they wanted you to think.

"It's just that no one makes me feel this--"

"_Question."_

Victor Sage touched a finger to his ear, still working on the lock with the twisted piece of metal in his other hand. "I'm listening."

The door opened with a tiny click.

"_Velocity 9."_

The detective paused.

"_We need everything." _

Vic considered the open office before him for a moment and slowly closed it, replacing the fine black hair on the doorknob exactly the way he had found it.

"I'm on it."

The commlink cut out. Vic turned.

"I'm bringin' sexy back—"

* * *

Wow! Long chapter! And me, I feel like I just passed a kidney stone. Probably not a great sign for only being the third chapter in.

I hate posting something I'm not 100 percent satisfied in (which is . . . always) but it was getting to the point where I was either going to put it up or the story was going to sink into the abyss of binary that is the unfinished fics of FF.

Anyways, hope I didn't butcher the WW/BM bit too badly. I'm not great at getting into the brains of those two, but I took a whack at it and hopefully didn't it turn into Lizzy Borden's parents. I tried to go off of _Dead Reckoning_, when Supes tries to get them all to go out and Bats says in this ostentatious voice, "Sorry, Diana, but—" and she looks all hurt and everyone in the audience is like, "Gee-whiz, he's a dick."

So . . . if you're confused, don't worry. Everything will be explained . . eventually. This was more a transition chapter. Action, advenure and drama are on the way!

Oh, and I just love the Question. The funny thing about writing him is you try to think of these outlandish conspiracies for him to believe, and you kind of start seeing the connections. Like, if you gave me enough time, I could totally explain to you about Johnny Quest and drug cartels and shoe brands.

Huh.

Review please!


	4. Chapter 4: Recovery

Wooo! 15 reviews! You guys are amazing! Thanks so much for all of your support.!

AND . . . I was added to a C2! Ahhh!!!! Who was it? (pokes) C'mon, you can tell me . . . ah, I love you guys! Is it sad this has me so excited?

Without further ado:

**

* * *

**

**Inertia**

**Chapter Four: Recovery**

The monitor room was mostly empty, due in large part to the tropical storm that looked on track to both gravitate into Hurricane Andrea and collide with the coast of North Carolina. It was the beginning of the season, and it was going to be a rough one. Clark was itching to get down there, could tell that his companions were as well (except for maybe Shayera, who hated flying with soggy wings), but most of the league was already on scene and Terrific said he had something important for them. J'onn stood off to the side, hands almost gliding over the panels, giving orders in voice that was calm no matter the tone of the addressee.

"I'll try to make this brief." Mr. Terrific turned in his swivel chair, dark face showing none of the stress of the situation as he calmly tapped a few keys, switching the screen from wildly buffeted palm trees -- the storm was just skirting the coast of Florida -- to lines of text. Clark studied it as if he actually knew what he was looking at, eyes pausing at a graph showing a few mumbling lines and another skyrocketing a jagged mountain above them.

"Batman sent me a sample of 'Velocity 9' and I ran it through all of the WatchTower's databases, as well as the MetroTower's. I wasn't able to identify it as anything made commercially in the US or any other country – I couldn't even find anything with a similar chemical composition. It took engineering a new chemical identification test and about twelve rat autopsies, we finally figured that the substance in Wally's system was an extreme metabolic stimulant.

"I'm not a doctor—" and somehow Clark doubted that. Terrific might not have an M.D., but was probably as well rounded in every branch of medicine as specialists three times his age, "--but the best I can figure is when the substance was introduced into Wally's already amazing system, it forced his body into hyper-drive. His heart was beating nearly a thousand times a _second _when was brought to the WatchTower. His lungs were taking in air and expelling it so quickly his blood cells weren't absorbing enough oxygen. His brain was nearly suffocating, which would explain the state John found him in. Nearly all the fat on Wally's frame almost immediately depleted, and his body started converting muscle tissue into energy. His metabolic rate finally hit such an extreme level it plateaued. The two forces cancelled each other out, and his body shut down."

"He short circuited." John muttered lowly.

Terrific's mouth pulled and he bobbed his head back and forth in a 'If that's what you want to call it' gesture, or maybe a 'Not really, but if it helps you get what I'm talking abou, sure' gesture. It was impossible to tell. "More or less."

"So . . . it's permanent."

"Not necessarily." The three of them visibly perked, though Terrific's expression remained stony. "The accident that granted Wally's abilities not only changed his metabolic rate, it altered every particle of his being, right down to his DNA. Had it just given him a super fast system, Wally would have died a week later. On top of dehydration, exhaustion and starvation, he would have aged roughly a hundred times faster than a normal person." Terrific clicked off the screen in front of him, and when he turned back to them the feeling of formality had drastically dissipated. The man leaned his elbows on his knees and propped his head in his hands, speaking in a perplexed tone rarely heard from a genius of his caliber.

"In all reality, The Flash _shouldn't_ work. His cartilage – which should be exhausted between his kneecaps after a short sprint – is nothing short of indestructible. Normal people's equipment wears out, wears down. His doesn't. His body manages not to use up its water supply in a few seconds. He doesn't _sweat_. His rate of aging is actually _slower_ than the average persons." There was a joke there, but none of them even touched it. "And don't get me started on how he manages to move as fast as he does without getting shredded by debris or flattened by landmarks. For Wally and every Flash before him, the laws of physics don't necessarily apply."

"Okay, maybe this is a stupid question," Shayera interjected, "but why don't we just give him another dose of it? If it shocked his system into shutting down, won't another hit jump start it back up?"

"Chemicals work differently than a defibrillator. Especially one as unstable as this appears to be. It could give him super speed, but just as easily send him back into cardiac arrest. And even if it did return his speed, it would likely be temporary. That's not a risk we're willing to take, at least until we know more about it.

"The doctors have done biopsies on most of his major organs and muscle groups, as well as a spinal tap. From what they can tell, body is still _equipped_ to move at super speed, he just doesn't have anything to facilitate it with. If the drug's affect is temporary – and we don't know how long it would take to wear off, a month, a year – Wally will be zipping around just like he was before."

John narrowed his eyes suddenly, muttered. "But?"

Terrific grimaced. "The problem is the blood tests we've been running aren't showing any traces of the drug remaining in Wally's bloodstream. For all intents and purposes, he's a perfectly healthy, perfectly normal human being."

* * *

It felt like a giant string of snot. Wally crossed his eyes, couldn't see it over the bridge of his nose. He flicked it, and it swung like a heavy pendulum. With just a second of hesitation, he tugged on it. That he could feel way down in his guts – like someone had just dragged a pencil tip up the length of his windpipe, making him gag and giving his skin a case of the crawls. _Not doing that again, _knowing that mantra would last maybe twenty minutes before he gave another experimental tweak. 

He'd done it _maybe _seven times since he'd woken up. The first time hadn't been his fault, though -- he just wanted to go to the cafeteria and grab a snack (even though he wasn't that hungry, which was the weirdest thing about this) and he'd gotten maybe two feet from the bed before he was yanked back, almost off his feet. The same way his mom used to do when he was a kid and being obnoxious – an ear snatch and a jerk.

Except this time, it was from his nose.

They shoved a _tube_ up his _nose_ while he was _sleeping_.

Sure, he had spent the last six days being shuttled between the OR and machines he was more surprised to find out _weren't_ alien technology. And yes, he had spent all of said time with enough drugs in him to be the fifth Beatle (and that was one kind of nice thing -- the 'phines' his system had always negated before finally took, and he spent a lot of time pretty doped up) and slept an average sixteen hours a day.

But a _feeding tube_ in his _nose_? That was just wrong.

Probably GL's idea.

And he kept bugging them to take it out, and they kept ignoring him and asking stupid questions that were stuck in a loop through the medical staff. No, he wasn't on any illegal substances. No, he wasn't taking any prescriptions at the time. No, he didn't know what chemicals first gave him super speed. Yes, he was absolutely sure he had adequately demonstrated how fast he was now. No, he wouldn't sign a waver so they could pick apart his brain. No, he really didn't remember what happened. Not even a little.

The last thing he_ did_ remember was taking Linda to a movie – their third date after she left her purse on the counter at Starbucks and he, the upstanding guy he was, chased her down and returned it. They went to a zombie movie (she was as crazy about them as he was) and she spent the whole time with his arm in a claw grip so tight he couldn't feel his hand. Afterwards they had gone to a restaurant they weren't dressed for and he couldn't afford, and Wally hadn't even blinked as he passed the waiter his 'emergency only' credit card.

And then they had been standing in front of her apartment building, her face all shiny and sparkly from the little bit of make-up she was wearing that he didn't think she needed, grinning at each other in that giddy awkwardness that always comes during the after-the-amazing-date drop-off. The conversation went something like this:

"I had a great time." And he did. He'd only said a few stupid things, hadn't gotten anything on his shirt at dinner and hadn't been reduced to the nearly super speed babble that usually overcame him in instances involving nervousness and beautiful girls.

"Me too."

"I'll call you." And to hell with the three day rule. He was going to call her when he got back to his apartment. Linda didn't look at him like he was an idiot and wolfed down a steak (medium rare) at dinner instead of picking at a garden salad. She loved mocha frappachinos and old Twilight Zone episodes. And she laughed at his jokes – and not that polite, distracted, shut-the-hell-up, people-are-looking laughter.

She'd smiled prettily, touched his arm in a way that made it all warm and tingly.

And then BAM! Exhibit A: Kissing Linda Park.

It was only a peck, because she was that kind of girl, but it was still like kissing an electrical socket with a copper mouth. It made his feet stick to the floor, made the world slow down in a way it never had before.

She had waved again through one of the thin side windows once she was inside her apartment building. He had grinned goofily, returned the gesture in a way he hoped wasn't too eager, or too weird, or too fast; a two fingered easy salute that, in his mind, was cool. John Travolta cool. Lady-killer cool.

He remembered walking home. He vaguely remembered being easy on Boomer later that night because he was in such an awesome mood. But after that everything was foggy, muddy; part of his brain was walled off with curtains that were heavy and black and he was swimming through them, back and forth, back and forth, looking for the seam and starting to seriously suspect there wasn't one to find.

Some part of his brain was wailing he should be nervous or scared or _something_, because GL had brought him in on Thursday and the date had been that Sunday, which meant he was missing _four days_, but all he could think was that he had blown it. He had gone at least a week without dropping Linda a line –not that it was his fault— he was pretty sure the only thing he was going to get the next time he saw her was a foot up his ass.

Wally plucked at the nose-tube again, glanced up at the clock mounted on the far wall and mentally staggered. He'd been lost in thought for _six minutes._

God. Six minutes used to be an _eon_.

The absence of constant, gut wrenching hunger -- that was the biggest thing. Other than that, he still felt pretty much the same. Everything around him seemed to be what had picked up speed; people walking by, doctors coming and going, and the pace with which they moved made the distance they crossed seem half what it really was. Hours passed like seconds. Trying to switch into 'fast-mode' -- trying to slow the world around him as he sped his perceptions -- gave him a headache and nothing else. If someone had told him he'd be like this a month ago, he'd have pointed out the Creeper and suggested they hang out, it sounded like they could be buds.

But other than that . . . no difference. The red, thin second hand on the clock across from him seemed to be racing his thoughts, and he thought wildly of that old kid's story – The Tortoise and the Hare. Which one was he now? God, he wasn't sure. Was he the jackass rabbit that just stopped to take a nap, or was he the fuckin turtle plodding slowly along – steady pace wins the race?

He let out a chuckle that bridged on hysterical, pushed the thought away. Far away, hopefully never to be seen or heard or thought again. Another laugh like that was sure to bring someone with a white party jacket and a one way ticket to a long game of darts with James.

Everyone -- all his crime fighting comrades, even the doctors and nurses – were tiptoeing around him as if anything would set him off into full lunatic screaming meemies (he had been on tranquillizers for most of the week, something he wasn't supposed to know, but he _was_ forensic chemist for Gods sake). Worse, they looked even more worried and uneasy that he _wasn't_ eating his hair and shrieking pie recipes in Pig Latin.

Maybe it just hadn't set in yet. This . . . this overwhelming, crushing _whatever_ he was supposed to be feeling. Maybe he was in shock. He was familiar with shock -- nothing else could have lead him through finding the empty costume of his surrogate father, a wake and a funeral dry eyed. And he knew about the break that shattered it; the sound of Barry's voice on the answering machine from some long ago reminder about some long ago event that sent him over an edge he never wanted to see again.

The memory made him shiver convulsively. Was that what they were waiting for? Was that what was coming? He tugged at the nose tube again, hard, gagged.

"Would you stop that?" Wally jumped, looked up. Shayera Hol stood in the doorway, her pretty face turned in a frown, hair plastered to the sides of her face and drooping wings half a shade darker than usual. "It's not there for you to play with."

She entered, grabbed one of the chairs from the across the room and dragged to the bedside. She collapsed into it backwards, legs straddling the base, arms crossed in an X over the support.

"Man, you look like a drowned rat. Y'know . . . if rats had wings."

She almost growled at him.

"And I wasn't playing." He dropped his hand, grinned. "I was testing its durability. Thinking about getting a permanent one. Takes the hassle out of actually opening my mouth and chewing."

She gave her head a little exasperated shake, flicking him with little drops of water. "Yom shigureth. Anything to cut down how often your mouth is open has to be a good thing."

"Shiga-what?"

"Never mind."

Silence, which made the room seem much smaller, much whiter, the stench of antiseptic much stronger. Wally almost laughed – here were the two most claustrophobic and arguably the loudest members of the league, sitting in a tiny sterile room playing the quiet game.

"Forty-six pounds in a day? Two days?" And it was a gruesome boast, but he'd lost seventeen after the speed force and this was a new personal best. "That has to be some kind of record."

"I don't think Guinness will be sending you any prize money."

More silence -- stretching, strangling, funeral silence. He was going to resort to knock-knock jokes to fill the air between them when he caught the look on her face. She was smiling, but all her usual sarcasm had gone out of the expression – it looked like first grader had finger-painted it on. And there it was, that look, _the look_, and dread clogged itself wet and cold in his chest, and he wanted to beg her not to say what she was thinking of saying, _just don't--!_

"Wally," she touched his arm. "Are you okay?"

And that was it. For the past six days, Leaguers had tramped through, making him feel like some sort of ghost at his own wake. Everyone was smiles and hugs and "Glad they could revive you before you were brain damaged!" with the same pity making their eyes shine like wet stones. Did you hear? Flash lost his speed. Is it permanent? Are they going to keep him in the League? I dunno, he's not smart enough to be anyone like Batman or Blue Beetle. Man, Wally's going to have a meltdown.

And that's how they'd been treating him, like some bomb they didn't know how to disarm or likewise trigger.

And the worst part was no one had come in to really, _really_ talk to him about it. He'd heard a thousand "Are you okay"s but there had always been that same expression: Tell me your okay, because then I can be okay, because I can't handle this weighing me down. Tell me this wasn't my fault. Tell me there wasn't anything I could have done.

At the same time, he knew he wasn't being fair. He was being bitter, and hated himself because he couldn't help it. Shayera and John were with him as often as they could be (when they weren't on missions, which was most of the time -- neither of them having a secret identity to maintain and all) playing cards, watching movies, and the others dropped in almost as frequently (except for Bats) and part of his mind was murmuring that it was _him_ keeping _them_ out, but . . .

They were just playing their roles and they needed him to play his, so he did -- joking and laughing and pulling on the tube that was shoved up his nose because he was 'severely emaciated' and thinking what's next buddy? What now? Where do we go from here?

Because he didn't think he could do this. Because he was terrified knowing he would have to.

Despair climaxed in a tidal wave and he forced it back, back behind a door marked Later or, better, Never. He commanded his cheek muscles to pull back, and Wally revealed his pearly whites in a way he hoped was reassuring. "I'm okay."

There wasn't any real relief in Shayera's face, just as there hadn't been in Supes' or GL's or Ralph's or GA's, but her mind begrudgingly processed the words with the coattail realization that she wouldn't be able to beat the truth out of him. If he was even lying, which she also accepted she didn't know. Her fingers remained on his arm, a ghost presence.

The cynic of Wally's mind let out a delighted giggle. _Batman's got nothing on you, kiddo._

But he was the heart of the League, right? And he wasn't so selfish as to deny them that.

* * *

John looked into the room from the hallway, his body sharp but his eyes haggard and lined, and for the first time he looked someone twenty years his senior. There was a towel over his shoulders though his costume was dry – a little special something that came with a suit created from solidified energy, she guessed. Tiny drops of water clung to his beard, shone like clear freckles on his bald head. 

Vixen came up on his side, coffee for him, chai tea for her, both in styrofoam cups from the cafeteria. She offered the beverage and he took it with only the smallest of acknowledgements, sipped it lethargically. His vibrant green stare never left the room. She wondered who was the object of his attention, then shoved the petty thought away.

"You know, the league needs someone for that UN assembly in Prague." She stirred her drink with a thin red straw, regarding him with come-hither hazel eyes. "I think Superman is tired of going."

He grunted. Caveman for "I'm listening, sweetheart," she assumed.

"I was thinking I could wear that Romani piece you like, the beige one with the scooped back? We would have to go back to my apartment and get cleaned up, of course. And Prague is gorgeous; I know I can talk a friend of mine into lending me her summer house for the . . ."

She trailed off, stood in silence, waiting with a raised eyebrow. Waiting for a look, a "Go on?" – she would take another grunt. Nothing. John was a million miles away.

Mari leaned against the window, raised the cup to her lips and continued in a offhand tone with a playful smile on her ruby lips: "And my doctor said that my sex change operation was right on schedule for next week."

She drank deeply, watched out of the corner of her eye as he blinked. His eyebrows furrowed as the message slowly processed itself through the churning cogs in his skull. He turned to her, face slowly contorting in disbelief. "Sex change--?!"

"Hmm?" She looked up at him with an owlish expression, "I didn't tell you?"

As his features teetered on the edge of dropping into absolute horror she laughed, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly, careful not to spill her tea down his back. "Gotcha, Beau." And now she had his attention. "But I really think you should come. You've been cooped up in this floating tin can for the last week. Not that I don't like dining under the stars—"

"Vix—"

"—and it looks like Shayera is doing an excellent job mothering Flash, so you can probably take the weekend off."

John's face turned down in an irked frown but after a moment she felt his shoulders roll in a sigh. "Let me go say goodbye." He muttered, stalked into the room.

Wally and Shayera both looked up as the door hissed open and John stepped into the room. He didn't come far before stopping, favoring the younger man with a glare that could have vaporized small woodland creatures and a scowl to match. Wally looked comically from his waterlogged appearance to Shayera's.

"Oh, man! Did the Tower have a pool party and nobody tell me?"

Not even a crack of a smile from the Lantern. "If I come back and you aren't right there, in that bed, I'll knock your head in."

"Aye aye, Captain." Wally saluted, winced as the IV tugged in his arm at the motion. John's expression fell. They remained in a triangle of uncomfortable silence before Wally's quick smile retook its rightful place, "Hey man, did you TiVo Heroes?"

John looked at Wally like he'd grown a second head for a minute, then rubbed his temples with two fingers. "Wally, why do you watch Heroes? No, wait. Don't answer."

"Take that as a no." Shayera advised, and Wally slumped in disappointment.

"I'll ask Vigilante."

"GL, you're _my_ hero."

Shayera rolled her eyes, butted the heel of her hand into her forehead.

"Why do I hang out with you?"

"_Beauuuu."_ John turned, Vixen stood expectantly in the doorway.

Wally snorted. Shayera hid a smirk behind her hand. John muttered something and hastily exited.

"Dude." Wally looked at the woman across from him and shook his head. "Vix has GL _whipped_."

* * *

Shayera left not long after GL did and the cute nurse came in with some meds and the next time Wally woke up, the nose tube was gone. And who said complaining loudly and constantly didn't get results? 

On the small table beside the bed was a plate covered in pink plastic wrap. He unwrapped it carefully, exposing a pyramid of dark, moist brownies. He stuffed one in his mouth almost immediately (the first food to be in his mouth in almost a week, and holy shit, this was the best brownie he'd ever eaten) and took the small piece of paper next to the plate.

A Get Well Soon Card, from Ma and Pa Kent.

Wally almost choked on his brownie, suddenly as close to tears as he had been in a long time. He tucked the card under the plate and polished off another slowly. Oh God . . where there _chocolate chunks_ in these? Wally moaned. He was going to feel even worse about this once Supes caught him, now that his folks had fed him and bought him a nice card and all.

Wally swallowed the last bite, and started pulling out his IVs. Which hurt, but the punctures only bled a little and there were only a few of them. Saline, some morphine from the biopsies, though the only one that had really hurt was the spinal tap – and that one hurt like a_ bastard_, and the headache afterward made him think his eyeballs were going to pop out of his skull like those corks jammed in the muzzles of pop guns. Another IV, that one blood, though he couldn't figure out why that one was there.

After they were out, his arms aching and itching and starting to bruise, Wally studied the clip on his right index finger. It looked deceptively like those things Clark had insisted they use to clamp the chip bags closed with on the first Tower, "_So they don't go stale, and everyone can enjoy them."_ Insert pointed glare. This was actually full of sensors and remotely linked to the heart monitor, feeding his vitals to a machine that had driven him slowly insane over his stay with its steady beeping.

Taking it off would either trigger a code blue, which would alert the cavalry, or turn the machine off. He was pretty sure which it was going to be. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, touching his feet to the cold tile (and God did it feel good to move his legs again) he stood slowly. He swayed uneasily for a moment before securing his bearings, and when he failed to become lightheaded or otherwise indisposed, he circled around the bed, hand trailing over the railing just incase his knees got rubbery. The other hand held the back of his hospital gown closed. Contrary to popular belief, the draft wasn't pleasant.

It would have been too much to ask for a gigantic plug behind the machine with a 'DO NOT REMOVE' sign. No such luck, just a few dust bunnies the cleaning crew missed. Must be battery powered. Most of the electrical equipment was – they didn't want to lose power and have someone on life support kick the bucket, right?

That fail-safe was more for when they had the big gun . . . thingy.

"Damn." He was hoping to get out without alerting anyone; get to his room and put on some normal clothes, and either convince some poor civilian to teleport him down or 'borrow' a javelin. He still knew how to drive them, and his key card should still work, though that would give them a pretty good clue he wasn't in--

"What are you doing?" Wally jolted, nearly groaned, prayed for . . . oh hell, prayed for it to be someone that he could just give the finger and walk out around. Just let it be anyone but—

Supes. With that hurt, eight-year-old boy look on his face that just screamed, in Wally's mind, _"My parents made you brownies, you bastard!"_

Wally laughed weakly, straightened and leaned again the bed, nonchalant. "What? You mean looking behind this lovely piece of machinery with my ass hanging out? . . . Nothin."

"Wally—" Clark crossed the room, came to sit in the chair that Shayera had abandoned a few hours before, backwards as well, which was kind of amusing. He picked up one of Ma Kent's brownies, looked at the other man questioningly. Wally waved his hand in a go-ahead motion as he circled the bed cautiously, coming to sit in front of the man of steel.

"Look, I know being here must be . . ."

"Driving me crazy? Nah. White walls, white ceiling, white bed, TV that can't pick up a decent signal half the time – what's not to love?"

Clark kept going in between brownie bites and swallows, as if he hadn't heard the younger man, "So . . . Bruce and I have been talking . . . and he wants to offer you a place to stay at Wayne Manor." At the look on Wally's face Clark quickly continued, "Or my parents in Smallville would be happy to—"

"Keep an eye on me."

"Wally—"

"No, look." And Wally tried to put all of the serious in his body in his voice, and found he didn't have much to draw on. "I'm touched that Bats is willing to sacrifice both his and Jeeves' sanity for my sake, but I'm not gonna kill myself. I'm not gonna go crazy and while I'm probably going to do something stupid, it's going to be normal Wally stupid stuff – not anything that's going to put me or anyone else in danger. I'm okay." After a moment of Clark's unwavering blue gaze, Wally sighed. Lying to Supes was nothing short of impossible, at least for him. "Okay, I'm not okay, but I'm dealing with it. There's nothing we can do, so I'll sit on my hands until there is something or it turns out there isn't going to be anything."

Wally looked down at his hands, his voice falling an octave. "Because this could be permanent. You won't do me any good keeping me under lock and key, because what I am now might be what I am for the rest of my life. And Wally West has a life he has to get back to."

Clark slowly chewed the final bite of his treat and swallowed. He reached up and touched his ear, said quietly, "You get all that, Bruce?"

A small, distant voice replied, "Cut him loose."

Wally decided that if Bats were not indeed male and creepier than a Ted Bundy convention, he could have kissed the guy.

Clark sighed heavily. Wally grinned, knowing that he had won but also knowing he had to be delicate with the big guy. "Now, is someone gonna go get me some clothes or am I gonna have to walk to the teleporters buckass naked?"

* * *

Woooooo . . . chapter accomplished. Thank god. Okay, the next chapter should be out pretty soon – much sooner than these last couple have been coming, and the action is going to start picking up. And I think I'm finished with 'R' titles. Maybe. I also hoped I cleared up some confusion from last chap . . . 

A lot of Wally this chapter . . . but it'll diversify a little next time. I just love writing Wally. He's such a great character.

And . . . I love T. And Vixen. She doesn't have many fans (being 'the other woman' and all), but I love her spunk.

Anyways, review!

------Okay, finally got around to fixing this chap!: Thanks to Nike  
Beau/Boo: Okay, Beau is the French word for beautiful (for a guy) and Vix's pet name for John. It's pronounced the same.

Oh, and did anyone else notice they forgot Flash in the character drop-downs for sorting? Super lame.


	5. Chapter 5: Storm

First: Comic Rant

Wally is _back?!_ It's a mad world, my friends . . . a mad, mad world. I am _supremely_ excited, but at the same time . . . he's like . . . old . . .ish. And they killed Bart! Wow. Kind of saw it coming. Didn't really dig him too hard, but I think he deserved a better run.

DC is cruel.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! Took me a little longer than I was planning, but here is chapter five!

* * *

**Inertia**

**Chapter Five: Storm**

* * *

His apartment was just as he left it – spotless and minimalist, which would have surprised more than a few people who hadn't been by. It wasn't as if Wally _wanted_ to look like he had just moved in the day before and he didn't make bad money; unfortunately, his check was forever divided between two black holes – student loans and a super metabolism sustaining diet, which didn't leave much to throw around at the end of the month. On top of that, his 58" Flat Panel Plasma HDTV and home theater system (his twenty-first birthday present to himself) effectively assured he would be in debt until he was forty. 

Once their molecules were in proper order, Wally kicked off his shoes, crossed the room and collapsed into the worn blue couch, placing the tray of mostly eaten brownies on the coffee table. Clark followed suit and sat next to him, eyeing the room in wonder.

"Nice TV, huh?"

"I didn't expect it to be so . . . clean."

"Well, when you're the fastest man ali—" Wally broke off, pressed his mouth into a tight line. Clark glanced at him uneasily, touched a hesitant hand to the younger man's shoulder, mistaking the 'that was stupid' expression on the younger man's face as grief.

"We'll get through this, Wally."

Wally smiled at Clark crookedly. "I know, big guy."

And just as Wally was thinking they were headed in a downward, Lifetime Original Movie, touchy-feely, my-dad-never-hugged-me-as-a-child spiral, a sharp electronic whine broke the moment. Clark grimaced, touched his ear.

After a silent minute he turned to Wally, face crushingly apologetic. "Wally—"

"I know." His grin grew wider. He slapped the other man on the back and only succeeded in making his hand sting. "You think bad guys would go on vacation or something. I think three days in Disneyland would do most of them wonders."

"I'll send someone by in a few hours to check on you." Wally felt a flicker of irritation, _What am I, four?_ and shrugged it away. At least he was candid, none of this 'Swung by to keep you company,' 'Oh, just happened to be in the neighborhood' crap.

Clark stood, touched his ear and called out to J'onn. He disappeared in a column of light.

Once the man of steel was gone, Wally sagged into the back of the couch, puffing out a breath. _Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life, my friend. How would you like to start out this momentous occasion?_

His body felt weary and achy, which was insane, since he'd gotten more sleep over the past week than he usually got in a month. His brain, on the other hand, was frustratingly and almost painfully restless, twirling thoughts he refused to actively acknowledge like a lunatic taffy maker. Across the apartment, in the tiny cubby that was the kitchenette, the light on his answering machine blinked impatient red. Wally pushed himself up, made the four steps it took to get to the adjacent room, and pressed play.

"_You have . . . twenty-one . . . new messages."_ Flies buzzed fatly over the sink of crusty dishes. Wally grimaced, reached over the counter and flicked on the hot water.

"Hey Wally, its Jerry--" Jerry McGee, his boss. Bad news, he sounded pissed, "--give me a call." It was the first and last from the bill paying job. Hopefully that meant the League had cooked up a really good cover story, and not that his ass had been canned.

The answering machine prattled a handful of messages from respective family (and not so family) members -- Iris, Jay, even Bart, though in his he had the loving courtesy to call him a dickweed. Wally hunted for a pen for a minute, jotted down to call Jay and tell Gar to give Bart a swirly, attached it to the fridge with a strawberry shaped magnet. He'd already talked to Iris while in the Medbay; though he was pretty sure he was thoroughly stoned at the time and couldn't recall any part of the conversation. He added her name to the list, underlined it. Telemarketer, telemarketer, some girl named Sandy who he'd apparently given his number (and after a moment of uncertainty he replayed the message and wrote her return number down with a '?' next to it).

"_Hey, Wally, it's Linda—" _There were three from Linda, the last tentatively asking if they were still on for Wednesday. Wally had begun loading the dishwasher and took a moment to bang his head repeatedly into the nearest cabinet. Wednesday was one of the days his memory had conveniently dumped. Had he gone out with her? Had Linda been stood up? Find out next time, on the sad reality that is Wally West's love life.

Cue credits and ending jingle.

When the answering machine finally beeped itself back to silence, Wally closed the dishwasher without starting it. He picked up the phone, put it back, picked it up again. Stared it down and dialed quickly. It was the middle of the fourth ring before he realized he didn't have an excuse for his absence that was anywhere close to convincing. Not to mention that if he _did_ see Linda again, she was going to be wondering how it was possible he had gone from a healthy one seventy-five to a staggering one twenty-nine in a little over a week.

His mind was skipping on that fact like a deeply scratched CD when the phone picked up.

_"Hi, this is Linda--"_

"Linda, it's Wa--"

_"-leave me a message."_ Great. Phone tag, his favorite way to communicate.

"Hey Linda, it's uh, Wally." _Smoooooth._ He told the back of his brain to shove it. "I guess I'll call back later, or, you know . . . if you get this before that . . . I know you're probably wondering what happened, and I_ can_ explain . . . so . . . I guess . . . I'll talk to you later." He hung up lamely and dropped his head into the counter with a _bang_. "Wow. How could any woman in their right mind say no to that? Idiot."

Wally turned and trudged to the apartment's single, tiny bathroom and peeled off his clothes, making the mistake of catching himself naked in the mirror.

"Damn." Wally touched his chest -- where almost all the ribs stood out in independent, curved shelves -- and could feel almost no pad of fat between the skin and bone. His arms were stick thin, once toned muscle slack with what seemed to be fatigue. And he _looked_ sick, like a junkie that had gotten a hold of some bad china white and didn't know when to quit. His pale green eyes stared back at him from black caves above painfully pronounced cheekbones. His hair looked almost comical against his too-prominent skull, like a bad red toupee. He never, in a million years, thought he looked _that_ bad.

_Self-confidence, you comfortable at like, thirty-one? Well welcome to negative a hundred and sixty nine._

He turned away from his reflection and stepped into the shower, stood under its scalding spray for what he would later discover was sixteen minutes. The hot water relaxed his stiff muscles, eased some of the soreness of inaction, and he stepped out feeling better than he had in a while. Wrapping a towel around his waist he shuffled to his room, started rummaging through his clothes. His hips had -- and he didn't think it was possible -- gotten even narrower. After twenty minutes of digging, finding a pair of pants that didn't hang at balls level was proving impossible. Not that he didn't appreciate the drag ass, boxers hanging out, gang banger look, but he was entirely too pale and too far out of highschool to even attempt it. Resigned, he had just begun hunting for a belt when he heard the intercom box next to the front door crackle to life.

"_Wal? You there?"_

Wally nearly tripped over his own feet (and the cuffs of his pants) getting to the door, but once there he paused. Did he really want to do the 'I'm not okay, you're not okay, but that's okay?' crap he had just gotten away from?

Why not. It was Dick, after all. Wally punched the speaker button, hiking up his jeans with the other hand.

"I'm here. Door's unlocked." And he buzzed him in. By the time the door opened Wally was fully dressed, still vainly searching for a belt.

Dick Grayson, his best friend and fellow Titan since the age of fourteen, sported a twenty-four pack and his usual half smile greeting when he entered the room. He caught one sight of the other man and the smirk dropped off his face like a shot bird. His blue eyes bulged in their sockets under a mess of raven hair. "Shit." Dick muttered, giving Wally a once over. "You look like hell."

"Thanks."

"Lift up your shirt."

"Dick," Wally's gasped in faux sock, batting his eyelids, "I'm flattered, but I think we owe it to Donna to at least—"

"_Wallace_." Dick leveled the other man with a glare that could rival big Bat's. Wally was hardly affected. He glowered back, a grin pulling up the corners of his lips.

"You look like your old man when you do that, _Richard_." Dick's hand shot forward and yanked up the front of Wally's black Ramones shirt. He sucked in a sharp breath at Wally's sunken stomach and let the fabric drop from his fingers, shook his head as he started towards the kitchen.

"Don't let those pro-anorexia sites get a hold of you. They'll make you their mascot."

Wally rubbed the back of his neck as he followed, adjusting his shirt with his other hand. "Yeah, they had me all lined up to do a Jenny Craig commercial, then Kirstie Alley thought I was a mozzarella stick and tried to eat me so I bailed."

Dick wasn't paying attention. He had pulled out his cell phone and was studying the rainbow litter of take-out menus that covered Wally's ancient refrigerator, dialing a number seemingly at random.

"Dude, what are you--?"

"Yeah, I need a number one, a number two, a number three . . . and two number fours. And a number seven. And a number nine. . . eggrolls? Uh, give me a dozen . . . And three of the big things of eggdrop soup . . . great. . ."

"Dick—"

Dick held up the 'give me a minute' finger as he pulled the phone away from his ear, punched the 'End' button, and scoured the fridge face. He dialed again. "Yeah, I need five large pizzas with everything on them—"

* * *

"Dick . . . seriously . . ." 

"Eat."

"I _caaaan't_." The counter was covered with half-empty Chinese takeout cartons, grease stained pizza boxes, paper bags with subs and tacos and burgers (after he'd run out of places that delivered, Dick had gone to all the immediate surrounding drive thrus) all in various states of disarray. Fries lay like fallen soldiers on the floor. Cans of soda and beer scattered the countertop. Wally lay his head down between a crumpled Arbys bag and an empty box of Little Caesar's Italian Cheesy Bread and moaned. "I'm going to explode!"

"Wal." Dick pushed a pizza box at him. "Finish."

The red head gave him the darkest glower he could muster. "I swear to God, when I puke – not if, _when_, because it's going to happen – I'm going to projectile vomit all over you." He took a piece of now cold pizza and ripped off a bite, chewed violently. "It's going to get in your shoes. I assure you. I'll aim."

"Thanks for the lovely mental image, but I think I'll risk it." Dick pulled another can of Bud out of the pack and cracked it open, set it in front of the other man. Wally took a drink disdainfully.

"You know you're killing my brain cells with this."

"Luckily, you're not using them." Wally stuck his tongue out, finished the piece of pizza and swallowed thickly. "And you need the calories."

". . . no more. _Please._ I think I ruptured something. . ."

"You know, when the Titans heard about what happened they were all really worried. If you keep whining, I might have to call Kori." Dick offered Wally a devilish grin, "When she hears how much weight you've lost, I'm sure she'd be glad to come over and cook for you . . ."

"You're a bastard."

"Eat."

Wally slowly but surely worked his way through the rest of the pizza. The final piece of crust was in his hand when Wally spoke quietly.

"Dick?"

"Huh?"

"Thanks."

They sat in silence for a moment as Wally chewed, not looking at the other man or anything in particular. He expected 'No problem,' 'You'd do it for me,' maybe 'I'm here for you, buddy.' Insert hysterical sobbing, 'I love you man's and totally not-gay, completely masculine hugging. Something that would cheapen the gratitude, falsify the brotherly closeness between them.

Dick knew him better.

"If you think that's going to get you out of finishing the Taquitos, I've got some bad news."

"I hate you."

Comfortable calm descended between them, Dick watching as Wally turned the food now in front of him and begrugingly worked his way through it. He leaned back afterward, idly tearing at the Taco Bell wrapper with nervous fingers.

"So . . . the Titans know?"

"Yeah."

"Bart too? He left me a message, but that was before . . ."

"I think so." Wally sighed shakily, chewed his thumbnail.

"He can't take over now. He doesn't know enough, doesn't have enough control, y'know? He'd just end up getting himself killed. Maybe Jay will come back and cover Central City for a few years, you know, until he's ready. But Jay's get—"

"Wally." Dick touched his wrist, and Wally blinked at him uncomprehendingly, glanced down at his hand. He had bitten his thumbnail down to the quick and it was bleeding. He reluctantly put his hand down. Dick stared at him uneasily. Wally had only looked like this once before – face pallid except the spots of color high on his cheeks, the erratic light in his eyes – and that was after Barry died.

And that had been _terrible._

"You should go visit the Titans." Dick suggested, tried to get back to the light, ribbing banter from before. The words fell flat. "I mean, I'm sure Donna and Roy will come by, but. . ."

"I'm fine."

"You're _not _fine." And the sudden, harsh fierceness in Dick's voice made Wally flinch. Dick yanked agitated fingers through his black, disheveled hair. "Look, I have to take care of some cape stuff in Bludhaven, but I'll be back tomorrow. Just . . ." He stood, grabbed his phone off the counter and tucked it back into his pocket, the motion exasperated and upset.

"Just don't do anything stupid, okay?" It was almost a plea.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." With a hasty, uncomfortable goodbye, the door swung shut and Dick was gone. Wally started putting the mountains of food in the fridge. Paused. He rake everything off the countertop and into the trash.

* * *

The damage made it almost impossible to see that the hippie beach town had once been what vacationers would call 'charming'. One side of main street was lined with what used to be little souvenir shops (better known as tourist traps to the locals) and restaurants. Parallel was a dock that held boats bigger than Dinah's apartment. Further down the mansions started, multimillion dollar complexes that had not been leveled by the storm – the brunt of Andrea had missed this area by a breath – but rather the monoliths leered and sagged into themselves like punctured soufflés. Cars lay overturned like dead beetles. Streets lined with showers of broken glass and deadfalls of debris, the asphalt completely washed away in parts. The gigantic yachts that crowded the still solid pier were now thrust up against it; pile-driven by their neighbors into interweaved immobility, looking like the broken links of a train wreck. 

"I still don't understand why we're stuck doing this."

"I completely agree." Black Canary shot her significant other a reproachful look. The two stood back to back, about two feet apart, waving their hands like airplane traffickers as a long line of those who had refused to abandon their beachside resorts now shuttled out due to the near uninhabitable conditions. Green Arrow glanced back at her over his shoulder, expression blank.

"I'm serious. I thought crowd control was why they let guys like Booster Gold in the League."

Dinah's mouth quirked and Ollie turned back to the line. The two of them had spent the better part of the day directing refugees, and this was their last before their shift ended. "Then again, it could have been a lot worse. Had the storm not veered off like it did, we'd have a lot more than a messy beach and a few busted boats to take care of."

The last few people herded into the shuttle and the doors folded shut with an airlock hiss. The craft took off, heading for the nearest shelter. Dinah and Ollie watched it go, Ollie holding his hat down, Dinah's blonde hair flapping around her face at the strong departing wind.

She turned to him, crossed her arms, tilted her neck back. "What now?"

"The best part." Ollie wrapped an arm around her waist and led her toward the dock, where the sun was just beginning to set, leaving streaks of orange and red across the glittering water. The wooden wharf was still steady and their steps echoed hollow as he led her through the forest of masts spiking crookedly against the golden setting sun.

Dinah turned to him once they reached the end, smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his. "This is very unprofessional, you know."

"If you're complaining . . ."

"I didn't say that."

Ollie grinned, dipped in low—

"What's that?"

--to get a mouthful of Dinah's lavender scented hair. He opened his eyes, frowned, her name coming out much whiner than it sounded in his head. "_Dinah. . ._"

She was looking into the water, expression turned in confusion. Ollie turned, leaned over to see her point of view. Below, caught in the scaffolding of the pier was a crate, bobbing and ebbing with the ocean's flow, knocking against the supporting beams with dull, hollow thuds.

"These are all noncommercial boats, right?"

"As far as I know." Ollie frowned. "Hey, look. There's another one." This one was stuck in a cranny between two of the vessels, sides cracked and buckling. Looking out into the fading light, he could see more of them scattered on the horizon, black squares against the fading light, pulling away with the departing tide. Dinah untangled herself from his grasp, lips moving, right index finger bobbing slightly as she shaded her eyes with her left hand.

"Fifteen." She muttered at last.

Ollie retrieved his bow from his back, picked a grappling arrow from his quiver and fired it into the crate caught in the gallows beneath their feet. The tip of the arrow punctured the wood easily and two prongs extended with a snap, catching the sides. The rope streamed behind it in the air, slack pooling in loops on the surface of the water.

"Let's play Batman, shall we?" He winked at her, taking the thin cord in his hands. The two pulled the crate up and out of the water, hauling it onto the dock. It was maybe three by three feet.

"Got a crowbar arrow in there?"

"Fresh out, actually." Dinah smiled and delivered a crippling axe kick to the roof. The wood splintered and caved around her heel. She reached and began wrenching flat chunks away from the hole.

"What the--?" Plastic medicine bottles, and the overwhelming amount of them made the number _thousands_ pop immediately to Ollie's mind, though there were more likely under two hundred. Dinah plucked one from the pile, held it up to the ruby sunset light. She shook it, frowned at swirling clear liquid.

"What do you think?"

"I think dinner and a movie just got cancelled, pretty bird."

* * *

"Cutler Davis." Cutler was over six feet with a square face, his burly chin unshaven and jutting with a heavy under bite. His features were unremarkable, the attributes narrow and focused near the center, leaving wide planes of cheek and forehead and chin. His nose was crooked from being broken innumerable times. He sat under the heavy white light of the Gotham City Police Department's interrogation room, scowling and rapping his hairy knuckles against the steel table in a sporadic beat. 

"Run of the mill Gotham thug and gun for hire. He's worked for everyone from Two Face to Penguin, not to mention a dozen mob connections."

"You think one of them may have been behind this?"

"It doesn't match Two-Face's MO, or any of the other more eccentric criminals in the League's records. And Penguin claims to be a legitimate businessman."

"You believe him?"

"No. But this isn't his style."

Diana gave Bruce a sly smile, "So, do I get to be bad cop?"

"Stay here."

"No."

She thought she saw him smirk. The two of them exited the small room behind the one-way mirror and into that containing the criminal. Batman stood near the door, glowering; Diana took a seat across from the inmate. Cutler let out a low whistle, took her in and grinned wolfishly.

"Must be my lucky day. Too bad the conjugal visit schedule is full up."

"Who are you working for?" Bruce shot Diana a minute, disapproving glance. Cutler barked out a laughed.

"Man, do they give out interrogation certificates to any pair of double D's these days?" Cutler leaned across the table, sneer deep in his ugly features. "Maybe if ya kiss me, I'll give ya a hint."

Diana pounded her fist into the table, leaving a sharp circle in the steel and making the whole tabletop buckle into a slight bowtie shape. The smirk faltered on the thug's lips, reasserted itself quickly.

"Care to try again?"

"I know how you capes work." Cutler drawled, kicking his feet back so he balanced precariously on the back to legs of his chair. "_No unnecessary force_. And if you touch me in here, you're giving me a free ticket to walk on police brutality. I'll have every inmate rights lawyer humpin my leg for my case."

Bruce swiftly kicked the legs out from under the man and he dropped to the floor with a clatter and a cry. Bruce grabbed him by the scruff of his prison garb and slammed him against the concrete wall.

"Watch your language."

Cutler laughed. "My lawyer counted all my teeth yesterday, Bats."

"I don't suppose he counted how many broken ribs I gave you, too? Was it four?" Batman smirked and pulled back a fist, "Because it might have been six."

Cutler's grin left his features but Bruce didn't like the look that replaced it: arrogant, taciturn. Fearless in abandon -- the expression of a martyr at the guillotine. "Do whatever you want. I'll be out by tomorrow. Something tells me all the evidence they got in that nice little locker of theirs has disappeared." His lips rolled upwards, his voice dropped into a mock hush. "We got moles everywhere. You otta know that – Gotham ain't no city of angels."

"Peasly will rat you out. He's no hardened criminal. He'll save his own skin."

"Who, piggy?" At this Cutler's smile bloomed a black flower across his face, made his nose scrunch up in a way that was terrible in its distortion. "Oh, I know he'd squeal. But he's a first time offender. Made bail. My bets he's dead, probably has been for a while." He dropped Diana a wink. "He was a user, in case you didn't know."

Diana flushed as if insulted and approached, hand clenched in a fist, "You arrogant little--"

Cutler continued as if she were of no consequence, looking Bruce dead in the lenses of his cowl. His voice was dull, almost chanting. "I'm just the first rung on the ladder. I'm the go to guy for just one of the pieces. I don't know nothing worth knowin'. But if you ask me." And suddenly the harsh white light seemed tight around his thick skull, made his meaty face seem thin and hollow with a death grin to match.

"This thing they got goin? It's gonna be epic. You thought you guys were the only ones that could get organized. That mistake is gonna cost you, big time. If it hasn't already."

* * *

The light created oily white streaks across the glossy surface of his body suit as he slunk across the rooftop. Below, trucks formed a semi-circle to the only open loading dock of the warehouse, the shuttered metal doors of their back ends closed. The dock itself stood open, though visibility inside was limited from his position. From what he could tell, there was no movement in or around the area. There hadn't been activity _anywhere, _all night, which was itself a foreboding sign in the crime cesspool that was the city of Bludhaven. 

"Are you sure this is the place?" Dick muttered, touching his earpiece.

"Positive." The scratchy, electronic voice of Barbara Gordon responded. "There's been a high level of activity in the area over the past couple of weeks, shipments coming in and going out after hours and off the books."

"Who owns the building?"

"The name it's registered under is Angel Marin."

Dick growled deep in his throat. Angel Marin was the crime lord before Roland Desmond, better known as Blockbuster, forced him out. The use of the name was an obvious slap in the face, an insult. Blockbuster, the iron fist of crime that regulated every black trade in the city and ninety percent of the police force, didn't care who knew his business.

Or wanted someone to know. This was sloppy, even for him. Dick had taken down too many drug and illegal weapon rings in the city for Blockbuster to want to announce the whereabouts of his operations. This was beyond sloppy. This was almost like . . .

An invitation.

Dick eyed the scene with a tight jaw. The closed metal doors, reflecting the bone white glow of the half moon. The open bay. There was no noise in the building, no noise anywhere but the scuttling of a few rats in filthy trashcans far below. No one had come in or gone out in the five hours he stood watch.

It stunk of a trap. _Screamed_ of a trap.

Dick allowed himself a moment to wish he were still in a team. He didn't miss being Robin -- that was insane -- but no matter the bad blood between them, Bruce always had his back in a fight. Still did, on the happenstance that Dick dropped into Gotham. Dick licked his lips tensely, reached for his earpiece. _To what?_ He demanded of himself, _Call for backup? Go crawling back to him like a kicked dog?_

Barbara was apparently on the same page, "Do you want me to--"

"No." Dick clenched a fist. He would do this on his own. Trap or no trap, it wasn't anything he couldn't handle or hadn't handled before. He unhooked his Bo staffs from his belt and flicked his wrists, sending them shooting into their full lengths in motions similar to unsheathing telescopes. He jumped off the roof, onto the top of one of the trucks, slid off and down to crouch on the ground with nary a whisper.

The loading dock loomed before him, a gaping corpse mouth, still and stagnant and waiting. He stole soundlessly inside.

In the nonexistent light he could see the dark, square shaped silhouettes that were boxes or crates lining the walls in neat, uneven rows. He slipped among them, turning, staffs clenched in his hands, body severe and cocked for battle, adrenaline thundering in his ears and behind his eyes.

The lights exploded into life. Dick staggered, momentarily blinded by the harsh fluorescent glare. He recovered a second later, gaze shooting around the perimeter.

On the top of every tower of crates (and they were crates, three by three, wooden) was a thug. Twenty, maybe, in all. Every one of them stared him down with eyes that bulged wide and hoarse-crazy in their sockets, pinpoint pupils shaking and convulsing, chests heaving in massive, thundering breaths. Some grinned, mouths thick with bubbling foam. Every pair of hands twisted compulsively around an array of weaponry. Pipes. Chains. Two by fours with ragged edges. Broken bottles, their sharp spikes winking viciously in the light.

Dick had a moment to wonder ridiculously where their Tommy guns had gone.

He dropped into fighting stance, raised his black staffs.

"Come on, then."

The first came at him in the time it took him to pronounce the first syllable, the blow delivered so quickly he didn't feel it. Before his mind could fully register the onslaught, it was over.

* * *

Bruce's communicator let out a shrill shriek.

Cutler's grin widened, splitting his face in two. Bruce raised a finger and pressed one ear of his cowl. An instant later he dropped the criminal and swept out of the room. A flash of light beneath the door signaled his departure.

Cutler watched him go, braying laughter. In an instant Diana grabbed him, slammed him against the wall. His smile burned into a tight, quavering line, snickers cutting off as if their microphone had been pulled.

"Let me tell you something." Diana growled in a low tenor. Her blue eyes were electric, ominous, mouth a sharp snarl, her body tense and asking for resistance.

"Look, Legs—" She pulled back a fist and slammed next to his face. A basketball sized area of concrete disintegrated on contact, puffing out in a cloud of dusty smoke, peppering his cheek with bits of rock.

"You may _get out_ of here on a technicality, but no lawyer can assure that you'll _walk_." She drew him off the wall and slammed him back into it. All the breath went out of his lungs in a violent _whoosh._

"Start. Talking."

* * *

Okay! Awesome. Ollie and Dinah almost get to violate the 'no office romance' rules, Wally goes home, Diana gets her badass on, and . . . well . . . guess we'll find out what happens to Dick next chapter. 

Please do not throw tasty carbonated beverages at the screen.

But do . . . REVIEW!


	6. Chapter 6: Questions and Speculation

Wow. I'm super sorry this took so long, but I suddenly and inexplicably became addicted to Twilight Princess on my Wii. . . Damn you Zelda, and damn the creators of motion detection. Plus I'm having a really hard time with some of these chapters . . . sigh . . . I keep wanting to put things in and my muse keeps kicking me in the teeth. Anyways, thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter!

Now, the startling conclusion to my story!

Ha ha. No, totally kidding. I had you going for a minute though, didn't I?

Okay, here it is:

* * *

**Inertia**

**Chapter 6: Questions and Speculation**

* * *

_There was no thinking involved in fighting; Dick had learned that before he even learned _how_ to fight. That gem of knowledge went back to the days of The Flying Graysons, the days of being an aerialist exclusively. He didn't think before he jumped, because thinking might make him realize he was the craziest kid on the planet. Thinking might make him wonder if they checked to see if the net was tight enough, and wouldn't buckle in the event of a fall. Thinking might make him wonder if they made sure to properly secure the trapeze to the tent's high scaffolding. Thinking might make him doubt, might make him afraid, might make his hands clumsy and balance loose. Instead, he dropped mindlessly, a bird diving toward a kill, and felt the bar slip between his hands as if drawn by magnetism and swung around it, just as natural as moving water._

_The principles were strikingly similar. In combat, his body did the reacting, the punching, the dodging, and occasionally his mind would interrupt the mechanical flow with the hasty and sure: "He's got a gun!" But for those minutes of parrying and returning blows, cognitive thought took the back seat, confined to registering unspoken cues and processing a hostage in the corner or the ticking clock of a bomb. And, of course, maintaining witty banter._

_Fighting speedsters was not so much different as it was an absolute. He and Wally had trained together since their voices were high enough to shatter crystal and Dick had plenty of recollections to draw on, plenty of experience in the circumstance. At first, with Wally having nothing but an insanely coincidental accident on his side, up against Dick's already numerous years of Bat Boot Camp, Dick could handle his own -- even with the speedster at what he thought then was full speed. Dick took advantage of Wally's immaturity, of his initial awkwardness in the training room, turned the speedster's power against him. He learned early, painfully, that fighting someone with super speed had nothing to do with calculation or observation. Mind blank, nothing processed. Even that neat trick they teach in the third grade, about how touching a hot stovetop makes the spinal chord react instead of the brain -- signals never even made it that far._

_The only thing that mattered was muscle memory. And not getting hit. Because as long as he could stave Wally off and make sure the speedster didn't even land a glancing blow, he could keep the rhythm. But a touch, an interruption in the beat and it was over. _

_They came at him, and for a moment, seeing the first fist rushing at him (and it came so fast that the word seeing was a stretched truth; he _felt_ it, and that's all that ever mattered) the memory of that first match in the Titan's training room felt so close Dick thought he could have reached out and touched it. He sidestepped without deliberation, stuck out a bow staff and clothes-lined the first thug. The man went tumbling through the air at near the speed of sound; hit the far wall with enough force to hopefully mash his brains into his intestines._

_Clumsiness. Inexperience. They moved so quickly blows were deadly but their speed was too streamlined for sudden stops, sudden directional changes. In the same breath Dick circled, swiped another gangster's feet from beneath him with the other staff. Combined, both actions took under a half a second. _

_In the end, there proved too many. Even with his honed ability, his experience, even caught in the limbo of intensity they overwhelmed him. He lasted four seconds, took down three more before the first blow actually connected, (a pipe, maybe, because it didn't break on contact) and it hit him so hard he felt his bottom six ribs shatter in mirror glass fragments on impact._

_It didn't take long after that. _

* * *

"_HEEEEEEEY YAAAAA!"_

The scream cut through his brain like a bullet and Wally shot up and out of bed. Halfway his feet snarled in the twisted bed sheets and he crashed to the floor. He lay there for a moment, brain sludgy, praying for the awful noise to quit. His left hand was so numb from laying on it wrong he thought he might have killed it. His neck hurt. The sing/ringing (which Jay complained was about as close to music as a car accident, and now Wally was starting to agree) stopped.

He thanked Hera in a voice muddy with sleep.

"_HEEEEEEEY YAAAAA!"_

". . . dammit . . ." It was blacker that a rat's asshole, as Grammie Flash used to say, and Wally fumbled for the disturbance in the what he dimly realized was dead of night. His not-dead hand rose like a submarine periscope, the rest of him lying disjointed on the floor, groping for the damn—

Cell phone. It's existance pivoted completely on how culturally unacceptable not having one was. And the fact that girls seemed to find it cute to steal it and put their names and numbers in at parties and clubs. Not that he was complaining or anything. Wally pulled the vibrating, wailing thing down and eyed it groggily. The digital numbers on the glowing screen read 3:14 AM. He flipped it open, rubbing an eye with the heel of his hand, attempting to orient himself, still supine and tangled on the floor.

"Lo?"

"_Wally?"_ The voice was familiar and he fumbled to place it, simultaneously attempting to come up with some witty retort for what was, in his opinion, kind of a stupid question. Apparently, though, the smart-ass function of his brain was still deeply entrenched in the bliss of REM.

"Yup."

"_Where are you?"_ Another dumb question; where else would he be?

"M' 'parment." An emphasized afterthought: "_Sleepin_."

_"Good, you're back—"_ Jerry, and the satisfaction that came with the identification was like finally getting a stubborn jacket zipper to latch in the cold with numb fingers. Jerry McGee, the bill-paying job boss. Lab coat Jerry. _"—I need you at the lab ASAP."_

Wally lay for a moment, brow furrowed, expertly crafting a retort concerning both the ridiculous hour and the fact that he was pretty sure it was Saturday morning anyways.

It came out: " . . . huh?"

His genius went unappreciated, however; he was talking to the dial tone. Wally hung up, tossed the phone overhand across the room. Lay there for a few minutes. Got up.

Twenty minutes later, he was entering the Central City Crime Laboratory. The building was dark with the late (or, better, incredibly early) hour, the corridors leading to the different labs velvety black that surpassed night dark and became something solid and devouring. The building would have been impossible to navigate had slabs of harsh white light not streaked from a far doorway, which Wally instantly realized was the lab in which he and four others worked. While the other offices of the state-sponsored lab handled biological, trace, impression, and ballistics evidence analysis, his little creepy scientist family specialized in chemical identification.

The bars of fluorescent lighting were only on in the back section of the lab, making the stainless steel tables and glass beakers and tubes gleam where he worked, leaving the rest in twilight. The first thing he saw when he entered the area was the pile of manila folders stacked in a leaning tower, its base his Inbox. He nearly groaned. Super speed made sure he always got an above-average amount of work done -- though not enough to raise suspicion -- in a profession notorious for its tediousness. Now, without it, he was going to be in backup for months.

"Long time no see." Jerry McGee (who looked disturbingly like Barry, and Wally had made that Freudian slip a few times) was leaning against one of the stainless steel tables, a small stack of folders beside him, one in is hands. His complete attention was with its contents and he addressed the younger man without looking up. Compared to Wally's messy t-shirt and rumpled jeans – which he had finally found a belt for, stuffed between the cushions of the couch, God knew how it got there – Jerry was neatly pressed in slacks and a blue button down shirt, his lab coat over, only his tie loosened and slightly askew. He did, on the other hand, look wired. A steaming cup of coffee was on the table beside him. Wally wondered if he'd been at the lab all night.

"How was Gotham?"

_Gotham? _Wally was still pretty distant from coherency -- awake, but with the cognizant mental capacity of something roughly on par with crabgrass. The question bumped against his thought process like a fat fly to a windowpane.

"Uhh . . ." _What is he--? _". . . moody."

Jerry cocked an eyebrow as he raised his gaze from the occupying documents. His eyes widened as he took in the younger man. "What happened? You look terrible."

"Food poisoning." And for once he was grateful for his uncanny ability to word vomit (certainly no pun intended), and that his mouth seemed to have a mind of its own -- one that usually worked better in these sort of situations. Jerry's mouth turned, he nodded sympathetically.

"Where at, do you know?"

" . . . Iceberg Lounge." Wally said dumbly, upturning the end to make it sound like a question without meaning to. Was the Iceberg Lounge in Gotham? He had no freaking clue. Jerry nodded again absently, picked up the stack of folders beside them and offered them to the younger man.

"Run toxicology work ups on all of these. Top priority, I need them finished soon as possible."

That woke him up. "Whoa, hey, I still have that suspected arson to process," Wally didn't take them, instead crossed to the closet, retrieving his own white coat and slipping it over his shoulders, "and that debris has been sitting there for like a month. And I'm not even the tox-screen guy, most of the time; shouldn't the people over at STAR—?"

"I wouldn't haven called you in at three in the morning unless it was important." Jerry lay the files down in a line on the table, flipping them open as Wally came back over. On the top of each small stack of paper was an 8x10" picture.

"Gross." Three males, one female, post-mortem skin the color of cottage cheese, blotched with fading patches of lavender and almost blue. Their colorless lips were clotted on both sides with thick crusts of white. Thick smears of hair against their temples were either gray or salt and pepper, though the rest was what looked to be natural color. And all looked _ancient_, seventies to eighties at least, deep crevices with hairline and crow's-feet subsidiaries trenching their discolored, papery skin. "So, what? Cyanide in arthritis medicine?"

"The morgue has gotten these four in the last day. There's been another two in the last _hour_. Every one of them has track marks. We think Bassalgia might be distributing tainted heroin." Wally grimaced, nodded. "We don't want to get everyone up and arms if it's just coincidental, though, and I don't have time to send the samples over to STAR labs in Keystone, much less wait for them to run it on Monday."

Wally nodded again. Unlike crime kingpins Rupert Thorne, Blockbuster and Mannheim, who mostly ran in underground crime rings, illegal arms sales, and corrupt politics, Nick Bassalgia was drugs. Big time. He dealt everything from coke to 'roids to valium and was merciless in the gangland violence that followed his business. Bassalinga had carved out his stake in blood, monopolized the market, had driven out any outstanding competition years before. He was now the central distributor for the entire Midwest and Eastern coast.

Two-bit dealers putting out tainted drugs meant a few dozen blocks, maybe even a whole city might be in trouble. Someone like Bassalgia putting out bad product meant that, at least, five states were going to be in the red-zone.

"The samples are over by the GC/MS. I need to head back to the morgue and get their stomach contents." Jerry started out, turned around. "Thanks for doing this, Wally."

"No problem." After his supervisor was gone, Wally hesitated over the folders, flipping through them absently. Dead mug shots, a few pictures of the insides of the victim's arms, and Wally counted no more than one or two puncture marks. In the woman's folder was a photocopy of a driver's license for a twenty one year old girl. Someone had scribbled _Stolen?_ in the margin.

_Nursing home heroin rings? Society's more dicked up than I thought. _Wally crossed the room to the Gas Chromatograph/ Mass Spectrometer and started screening the sample for John Doe #121.

* * *

He was hardly recognizable beneath the cocoon of sterile white gauze and bandages, wires and tubing making him into some sort of bastardized maypole. The swelling was so severe normal respiration methods couldn't be used; they had to puncture the base of his neck and fissure the tube down his esophagus, bypassing the nose and mouth. His bruised eyes were taped closed, surrounded by a glassy clear balm to keep them from drying out. Black stitching created railroad tacks that peeked out from what little visible, ash colored skin there was. Part of his hair had been shaved away, a hole drilled to relieve the pressure the bleeding in his brain was causing. There was a small gauge attached to the bandaged opening in his skull that would alert them of any drastic changes. 

As soon as he was stable from the last multiple-hour surgery, he would be shuttled into the next, a revolving door would continue for an indeterminable amount of time.

The beeping was steady, the slight but definite rise of his chest unmistakable. The coma was medically induced, and even without the machine, he was capable of breathing on his own. A miracle, considering the damage, the doctors said.

"_Bruce, Dick isn't answering, something happened, I'm sending you the coordinates—"_

_There were no windows in the concrete building, but the moon was behind him and blindingly bright, even through the relentless smog of the city, and it cast a rectangle of seraphic white across the floor of the large room. There were about two dozen crates, stacked in towers that were arranged in uneven, messy rows, the smallest near the entryway. Someone had tried to clear out quickly and hadn't entirely succeeded. _

_There were bottles. Tiny plastic medicine bottles. They covered the floor, littered the disjointed bodies of the broken wooden casings they had sprung from, the light sliding smoothly over their perfect curved bodies and caps. _

_There were bodies, too. One no longer had anything resembling a head, a volley ball sized circular splatter of blood on the wall he was lying at the base of, the blood patch looking like a giant paintball impact point. Two more, in positions of disarray. A foot sticking out from behind one of the crates, presumably another carcass. Others, lying at the tops or bases of the stacks, looking as if they had simply dropped where they stood._

_The information came instantly, fleetingly, passed unacknowledged. In the middle of the floor was another body, smaller, lither, surrounded in an ocean of blood the moonlight made look black. _

"_I need an emergency transport!" Bruce screamed into his commlink, tearing off his cape and draping it over his _

(son)

_charge, not pausing even to checking and see if he was still breathing. "NOW!"_

"Carlton Duquesne." Bruce was broken from his reverie by a voice behind him. He soundlessly pulled his cowl to cover his face, didn't turn. Diana approached, stopped just out of his line of sight. "That's who the drugs were coming from. They were going to California, though Davis didn't know to whom."

After a moment without a response, she continued. "Orion has gone to New Genesis to retrieve a Mother Box from Highfather for him."

Silence diffused the air of the small observation cell hooked to Dick's hospital room, though separated with a wall and a thin pane of glass. Bruce did not turn, instead kept his eyes on Dick's rising and falling chest, absurdly sure that the second he looked away would be the second the movement stopped. Ridiculous, of course, with the machinery forcing his body to live it would be impossible.

He kept his vigil.

"How is he?" Diana asked tentatively, finally coming up on his side.

"They should have killed him."

"Bruce—"

"They didn't. Why?"

"A warning?"

Bruce tightened his jaw. Dick's legs were broken, but his kneecaps were intact, as where his Achilles tendons. He had numerous fractured and ruptured vertebrae, but both his spine and neck were still whole and functioning. There was internal bleeding but none of Dick's vital organs had been damaged beyond repair. His skull was fractured in multiple places, but not enough to kill him.

Quickly, at least.

He wanted to believe it was because Dick had handled himself until the end (and he had taken out more than is fair share, and that knowledge filled Bruce with a torrent of emotions he refused to express -- anger, guilt, pain, almost suffocating pride) but knew the bodies he had found weren't all of them. Maybe it really was a warning to the League, but a corpse would have been just as effective. They certainly had the muscle for it, as well as the trap. And with their new toy, how easy it would be to cut a throat, to snap a neck, to shatter vital bone and shred life sustaining tissue.

A dark voice in the recesses of his mind offered another explanation.

_It debases them._ It murmured. _The drug._ _Below that of animals, even, because even animals know death and proper execution. And just because they move at super speed doesn't mean they _think_ that quickly._

"Tell Clark to put the Tower on lockdown." Bruce spoke suddenly without moving, voice hard and harsh. "I'm issuing an Omega level alert. No one without super speed goes out in costume. If there's any one in the Metro Tower, they need to be evacuated. We don't need anyone else—"

"It may be too late." Both turned. Clark stood in the doorway.

"We've got a situation."

* * *

An hour later, still alone, heavy gray light beginning to drift in from the hallway widow via the lab's open door, the mass spectrometer beeped. Wally was attempting to verify that the paint sample in front of him was consistent with paint chips from a hit and run through a comparison microscope. He was getting frustrated with how slow things were going. 

"What's the difference between _Aurora_ blue and _Barents_ blue? They're both blue, and they look exactly the same! And what the hell is a _Barents_ anyways--?"

The machine across the room started to print out its results in an electronic, disjointed whirr and Wally went to meet it, rubbing his sore eyes with the back of his hand, thankful for the interruption. He glanced up at the clock. Twenty minutes had gone by since he'd last looked, and Wally didn't ever think he was going to get used to it. Time went by so _fast._

He collapsed into a swivel chair and pulled the papers out, smearing a little of the still-wet ink. No 6-acetylmorphine, so that ruled out heroine . . .

Wally frowned. No _anything_ that matched their chemical database, though the charts were still showing spikes in the isotope pattern with areas that rocketed above normal values. Wally tapped his chin, grabbed the next sample (Jane Doe #169), diluted it, ran it through. The next hour seemed to go by much more slowly. He tried to return to the paint chips and couldn't concentrate.

At the second beep. He snatched the next pages of results out, hardly waiting for them to finish printing. Subtle variances, but basically the same results.

By the time the sun was set firmly in the sky, Wally had all four results reports in front of him. All essentially matched. And none of the chemical levels detected were enough to kill someone with the drug alone.

Glancing around, Wally got up to shut the door leading to the hall. He returned to the desk, touched his ear, spoke quietly. "Hey, J'onn?"

"_This is Terrific."_

"Hey, T, can you get Bats on the line for me?"

"_Batman is unavailable at the moment."_

"Look, it'll only take a second. It's really important."

"_I can relay a message for you."_

"Okay, whatever. I think that whoever is making this Velocity 9 stuff is mass distributing it—"

"_We know."_

" . . . huh?" Wally frowned. "What do you mean?"

"_Wally, I need to keep this line clear—"_

"No, wait." Wally could sense the suddenly evasive tone and felt a panic rat start clawing up his throat. He forced himself to stay calm, keep his voice even. "What happened?"

Terrific paused, and it silence stretched so long Wally didn't think he was going to answer. He was about to demand a goddamn explanation, he was one of _The Original Seven _and just because he lost his powers didn't mean they could suddenly play information monkey in the middle--

"_Nightwing was attacked last night in Bludhaven."_

Wally froze, his mouth as suddenly dry as the Mohave. His stomach weaseled up into his throat, intent on choking him to death. _Oh, god, no, I just saw him--_

"Is he going to be okay?" He heard himself say, though the calm words seemed completely remote of his brain. His was dizzy. He told himself to breathe.

"_He's in critical condition in the WatchTower's ICU."_

_You're not answering me. _"Is he going to be okay?"

"_. . . we don't know."_

The world faded into shades of gray and Wally was suddenly up and walking, though he wasn't sure where he was going. He met Jerry in the hall (the other with two new folders in hand) and pushed past him, muttering something about needing some air or some coffee or something. He burst through the Lab's double doors and rounded the corner, didn't stop until he was at his apartment, not realizing where he was until he was standing in front of his door, unable to unlock it because the key in his fingers was shaking so badly. He wasn't sure how he got there. After a moment he managed, entered. He sat down, stood up, walked circles in his living room, fingers rubbing harsh lines up and down his temples.

"Is it the Titans? Are they going after the—?" He whispered to no one in a feverish, strangled voice, "What the hell is happening? What the hell is going on?"

_This is real, isn't it? This isn't just some god-awful dream because I forgot to check the expiration date on the milk in the fridge. _He collapsed on the kitchen floor, curled his knees up to his chest and held them. _I'm not going to wake up from this. I can't wake up from this._

_I can't do this. I can't do this._

* * *

"Professor Hamilton." Emil Hamilton froze in his half-kneel. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing through what the doctor had previously considered a cozy living room. Now it seemed ominous, shadows looming behind the dark drapes, in the corners, biting at the light diffused from the fire he was in process of stoking to life. He had insisted it be installed as soon as he and his wife had purchased the house, hazard or no, and counted it among one of the things that made the house a home. Now, even it seemed indignant; a malignant, raging tumor from which the voice had stemmed. 

The door separating the room from the hall slammed with a shotgun bang. The professor jumped, whirled, poker held before him as a saber, its tip swinging wildly with his tremors. A small, shapely woman in black and purple stood part revealed, sheltered by shadow. Her stance was relaxed, her arms crossed, one foot against the wall she leaned on.

The voice that had spoken was not female. "Do I know you?" He mustered, straightening his posture, lowering the metal rod.

_So, Superman has finally sent someone to—_

"No." The same voice that had spoken before. Hamilton turned, bit back a shriek.

_He has no face!_

No. No, that was ridiculous. A faceless mask, caught by the firelight to silhouette ominously in the darkness. The cry caught in Hamilton's throat and he stumbled back a step, two. The heat from the open fireplace licked his calf; he yelped and tripped forward.

The faceless man was in a blue suit, orange oxford shirt beneath it, head capped with a blue fedora. Hamilton had the sudden urge to laugh, loudly and uncontrollably.

_This is ludicrous! I must be dreaming! _Then, _Wait,_ _I've seen him before . . . yes, with Supergirl . . ._

"Velocity 9." Cold steel touched the side of the professor's neck; he turned, pricking himself against the glinting tip hard enough to send a trickle of blood down to stain his shirt collar.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The response was automatic, a robotic whisper. The professor began backing away once again, careful of the flames, with small, insignificant steps. The costumed freaks converged before him like the tired waters of the Red Sea. Their steps matched his, drove him into an empty corner.

"We already know Cadmus was involved in the project." The faceless freak said in a quiet monotone. "We need to know how."

"I told you—" The girl raised her crossbow and fired.

The arrow sliced through the air and Hamilton's life flashed before his eyes (_too short, too short, I'm only forty-seven_) and the sharp tip, already stained with his blood, cut through the fabric of his shirt above the shoulder like tissue paper, pinning him to the wall. Impulsively he began to pull at it like a terrified animal, attempting to free himself. It the smooth carbon didn't move in his sweaty grasp.

"Next one goes through your heart." The first words she had spoken. In a moment the crossbow was reloaded, trained on his chest.

Hamilton knew League members were forbidden from using lethal force.

He didn't doubt her words for an instant.

Hamilton licked his parched lips, swallowed hard. His body seemed to deflate as he sighed. "I don't know all the details. It all started a few years ago . . ."

* * *

Hmm . . . and the plot thickens. This was more a transition chapter than anything, now we get into the real fun stuff! (How many chapters have I been saying that . . ?) 

And yes, I know, I got bit by the Cadmus bug . . . hope no one's disappointed . . . but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the outcome. Presume nothing! Expect the unexpected! Brush three times a day!

Most importantly: REVIEW!


	7. Chapter 7: Effect

Kind of another late update (or, as I'm starting to think of them, a normal update) but you forgive me, right? Of course you do!

I'd like to take a brief moment here to thank, thank, THANK all of my wonderful, wonderful reviewers. I'm terrible at replying to reviews because I have the both attention span and memory of a goldfish, but I just want to let everyone know who's dropped me a line, good bad or otherwise, how much your comments mean to both me and my fellow authors. We wouldn't do it if it weren't for you guys, because as my checking account reflects, we sure as hell aren't getting paid. You guys keep me going, and I do a little dance every time I hear from you.

And there should definitely be a Zelda addict's support group, because apparently there are quite a few of us out there. (I'm at Zant, and I can't figure out how to beat him . . . ha ha, hopeless . . .)

Without further ado:

* * *

**Inertia**

**Chapter 7: Effect**

* * *

"_Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend—_" 

"So let me get this straight." The radio in Victor Sage's '66 cobalt blue Mustang was tuned to some teenybopper music station and Helena reached forward with one hand, flicking it off. They were maybe a half an hour out from Hamilton's and she had been waiting patiently for the discussion part of the ride to pop up, but thirty minutes of 'non-stop, commercial free hits from your favorite artists' and it apparently wasn't coming from his end.

Not to mention she had to listen to that crap in the halls of the school (no matter how un-Catholic and against policy it was), the hell if she was going to hear it in her thirty-year-old-plus boyfriend's car.

That completed, Helena returned to idly studying the tip of one of her arrows. Music gone, Vic devolved from lightly singing to silence. Helena gave him a minute to start talking; when he didn't, she continued.

"Cadmus, with their infinite knowledge and connections, somehow finds a formula to create super speed. Because most of the original was lost in translation, they try to develop it, but the project goes bust because of all the side effects and the fact that they can't get steady results."

Question nodded silently.

"So then, apparently, either Cadmus decided it was an awesome idea to sell the formula to crime bosses, or Johnny Q. Citizen from Human Resources leaked the info. Either way, the stuff starts getting mass-produced for whatever reason, by . . . someone. Meanwhile, Flash gets pumped full of the crap and it, apparently, does the opposite of it's intended effect and turns him into Average Joe, just like you and me."

Helena paused briefly, glanced at him and smirked. "Well . . . you know. Made him average."

Question nodded again.

"Does this make any sense to you, because it doesn't make any to me. Where are we going, anyways?"

"Cadmus headquarters."

"Cadmus doesn't have any headquarters." Helena eyed her partner warily. "The government shut them down after the Luthor/Braniac thing."

"There's something Hamilton wasn't telling us."

"What?" The smaller woman blinked twice, as if not comprehending. Her face fell into a contortion of ferocity. "Then let's go back--"

"No." They were just entering the outskirts of some city Huntress didn't know -- pawnshops, gas stations and Kwik-Cash loan offices whisking by at a barely legal speed. The streets were clear with the hour, black and glossy with the just-passed rain, reflecting the red light as Vic shot through it.

"Let me guess." A sardonic smile crossed Helena's lips. "Traffic signals are linked to the enslavement of impoverished Tibetan youth to make high end tennis rackets."

"Close. Cartoon neckties." Helena rolled her eyes. Vic continued as if uninterrupted. "Whatever Hamilton wasn't telling us, he was willing to become a pincushion to keep it under wraps. Velocity 9 is just the tip of the iceberg of failed or aborted Cadmus projects. We've got the string in our hands; let's see where the sweater unravels."

Helena studied him with a mixture of contemplation and dismay. "Just how many are out there?"

"That," He glanced over, solemn even through the faceless mask, and touched a finger to his temple, "is the question."

Miles away, Bruce was just discovering the mutilated body of Nightwing.

* * *

Minutes after Wally entered his apartment in a daze, Shayera Hol approached the gate to the building, eyes on the speaker box. She could have teleported right into his room, but it was her day off, and she wasn't about to call for a transport and get stuck watching the monitors because someone didn't show. 

That, and she had found out the hard way Wally didn't always wear a towel after getting out of the shower.

"_Shayera?!"_

"_Cold in here, Wally?"_ The memory made her snicker, though the disturbing repercussions of that incident would probably haunt her for years to come.

Not to mention Wally was always bugging her to . . . _mingle_. Ninety-nine percent of her off-duty time was spent either taking shifts from others or sitting in her room.

"_Go shopping_. _Eat out_. _See movies_._ Seriously Shay, you sit up on the Enterprise and brood so much I'm gonna start calling_ _you Bats."_

"I do _not_ brood." She muttered under her breath. "I value my alone time."

So this was her . . . humoring him. She'd stopped at the Wal-Mart on the way and picked up a case of Rockstar and The Office: Season 2, remembering Wally saying something about it and hoping he didn't have it already. She'd kept expecting the clerk – who looked about as excited to be there as she did – to look up from the cash register and scream "_DIRTY HAWK!" _It didn't happen, of course. The ankh charm Inza had given her masked her wings, colored her hair an unremarkable brown, and in jeans and a t-shirt she looked as much like Shayera Hol as any other petite woman in the city. The cashier, instead, wished her a good day with as much enthusiasm as one proclaiming the weather, and Shayera walked out. The old man standing by the exit, however, did offer her heartfelt farewell, and she found herself smiling in return.

Not that she would want to do it . . . ever again. The Wal-Mart was twelve blocks away and all the walking was killing her feet. _How do humans do this all the time?_

She kept her purchases in the original bag, just so Wally would see it. He'd be so excited with her adventure into what Diana called 'Man's World' he'd probably pop a blood vessel, would demand of her the details like a kid at Christmas. She, of course, exasperated, would fill him in, trying not to enjoy as he elated over each step, as if her _getting out_ were a Herculean task. But it would distract him, and maybe after they watched The Office she could get him to take her to a movie or something. Reassure him that he wasn't forgotten. Fill him in on League stuff, though not this Velocity 9 business; bureaucratic red-tape nonsense that would make him feel included. Take his mind off a world that seemed intent on quashing everything he held dear.

Wally was maybe her only real friend, she realized with a start. She counted on the others, trusted them with her life, but it was Flash that not only welcomed her back to the League with open arms, but with a bone crushing hug, a sonic speed pirouette and kiss right on the mouth. Purely platonic, he explained later with a wolfish grin.

The memory made her smile and roll her eyes.

Though, Mari _was_ making a decisive effort to break through that barrier, though that one Shayera thought she would probably never figure out . . . And she and Diana had gone from leave-us-together-alone-in-a-room-at-your-own-peril to something resembling genial camaraderie.

And then, of course, there was John . . .

She reached the gate, hand rising to touch the small black button next to the faded paper label that was 4F – W. West. The charm masked her wings but they were still present, apt to the shifting of the wind, of the sudden, silent presence at her back. Shayera's hand was clutching for the mace absent from her belt before she was even all the way turned around.

"John." In non-committal civilian clothes, a twelve pack of mountain dew in one hand, Season Three of Lost in the other. She relaxed, hand falling, expression smoothing into nearly a smile.

John's mouth quirked in the slightest, shoulders rolling under his shirt with a heavy breath that rustled her invisible feathers. He opened his mouth to either beg an excuse of sudden departure or demand what she was doing there, to which she would reply, _Same thing as you, genius._

Before he could, however, she pre-empted with a: "No, I'll come back."

John frowned. "He _needs_ both of us."

They stood in silence for what seemed like years, the tension between them so thick it might have been an actual wall. People passed on the busy street, moved to avoid them and the seemingly vacant space her wings occupied without awareness. The streetlight opposing them changed from red to green; cars sped by. A woman in a black dress across the street was screaming into her phone.

"Look." John started, paused, as if deciding whether to continue with placidity or military brusque, "I just don't understand why we can't--"

"John, I really don't want to do this right now."

"Do what? Everything isn't_ always_ about us--"

"You're the one that brough it up!"

"Brought _what_ up?"

"Don't play stupid, John, it really doesn't--"

The Lantern suddenly raised a hand, cutting her off. Shayera stopped, mouth dropping into a scowl. "John--"

"Do you hear that?"

"What?" He didn't continue, and after a moment she mimicked him, tilting her head slightly, listening. There was the sound of cheering from the sports bar across the street, talking, laughing; horns that blared Neanderthal communication to one another. The woman still yelled into her cell phone as the light changed and the cars slid to a stop. Shayera noted absently the shouting growing closer as the woman began to cross the street towards them, her red heels flashing in the afternoon light glossy as fresh blood.

And John was right, there was something . . . like a jet turbine, almost, far off, though no plane would be flying this low, not this close to a big city, and there wasn't an airport for mi—

"Get down!"

A streak blurred past. The sound barrier exploded. The gale force wind that followed ripped the shouting woman from those pretty shoes mid-stride and sent her into the taxi to her left, through the front windshield and back, into the car behind it. The windows of the surrounding shops shattered and fell in an incandescent, dagger hail. People were screaming. Those who could run did, though the assault was over in an eye blink and made no show of returning.

John had both thrown himself over Shayera and erected a green bubble around them with his ring. Now both retreated. "What the--?"

Shayera pushed out of his grasp, tore the leather strap that hung from her neck in one easy motion and flung it away, breaking the charm's hold; her bag dropped from her fingers and the parcels tumbled out. She reached behind her into the pocket dimension that followed her like some floating, adoring puppy and felt the cold handle of her Nth metal mace. Her wings emerged from absence, her hair flooded into sun fire red.

"Shayera--?!"

"Take care of the civilians!" She sprinted down the street after it, ran up the front of a stopped semi – foot on the bumper, the hood, the windshield, to the top of the trailer – using it as an opportune staircase. Bolted across the roof, steps thundering hollowly, met the end and leapt.

She fell for half a second before the hot wind baking off the black asphalt and the tops of the cars now askew caught her wings and she swooped low, gave one powerful, thunderous flap and bulleted forward, all the hair flying out of her face, body and wings twirling like trick biplane.

There was a trail of shattered glass, of bodies ripped out of shoes and clothes, looking like they had been yanked inside out like washed pockets. She could hear it, of course, the sound like that of a faraway jet taxiing a runway for takeoff. She swept up into the air, higher, higher, immense wings flapping with heavy strokes. _There's no way I can catch it, but maybe--_

Up, above the modest skyscrapers of the working class capital of the USA, up until the sun was warm on her back and the cars below were matchbox sized. She hovered, eyes sharper to the nth power than a human's scanning the streets.

"Where are you?" She muttered to herself, caught sight of it. The blur was making a beeline down Main Street, the wind behind causing cars to roll and flip in its wake like tumbleweeds. Watching it go was like watching the flag go the rail at a dog race.

Someone was calling her, though if it were John or a voice from the commlink she wasn't sure. Didn't care. She watched the black blur and she unhooked the mace's strap from around her thin wrist. It made no motions to change direction, and she would have to trust that it wouldn't.

Shayera took her weapon in both hands, swung her body twice in massive arcs that used every muscle, building momentum. She let the mace fly with a warrior scream.

"_HAAAAAAA!"_

She aimed maybe five miles in front of it, and when the mace hit the road the mounting inertia blew it apart in chunks, sent a rolling wave rippling through it that tossed cars and broke windows and sent up a mushroom cloud of dust that masked whether or not the tactic had worked. By the time the ground had stilled and the dust beginning to settle, she was landing on the street's spider web cracked surface. Her mace had made a crater five feet wide and a foot deep. She wrenched it from the ground. Water sprayed from busted pipes twisted in all directions. A fire hydrant had come unhinged and was causing a sort of faux rain. Light poles had come down or shifted into disjointed angles, traffic signals grounded with their lights sputtering. Car alarms screamed. There were people shouting. Glass crunched under her feet and she saw him, in the middle of the street, apparently unconscious or worse, lying crumpled with clothes of a teenager and the filthy, rugged face of a sixty-year-old wino.

Shayera grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, hauled him to his feet and slammed him into the nearest wall. "Who the hell are you?" Velocity 9 didn't enter her mind; much less tie the connective dots. Chase adrenaline was still throbbing tides in her temples, pushing back cohesive thought.

The wino-faced man in a pair of Dickies and a My Chemical Romance T-shirt had come awake, come alive, and was moaning and babbling so quickly it made her head spin. His eyes rolled like wet marbles in his head.

"Pleapleanemorneemorpleahnemor_NEMORENEMORE_—" A trickle of blood escaped the wino's nose. His eyes revolved to the whites and he jerked spastically; died.

Shayera dropped him, stumbled back, didn't have the chance to be shocked before something grabbed her. _"Get out of the way!"_

* * *

"Men." 

"Here we go."

"I mean, to think that he has the balls to _not only_ stand me up, but to call a week and a half _after_ the fact and leave some _stupid _message—"

"Linda . . ."

"--and I thought he was one of the nice ones! Good looking, funny, and I say to my self, I say, 'Finally nabbed yourself a good one, Linds. I mean, sure, he's no Orlando Bloom, but you can finally get mom off your back about freaking grandchildren—'"

"Linda . . ."

"—but no. He turns out to be a dick. Just like the other ninety-nine percent of the male population!"

"Linda . . ."

"Do you think it's because I talked about the Flash for like . . . half an hour at our date? Maybe that was it. Maybe they think I'm some sort of psychotic fan girl. I can't help it! I know it's a pipe dream, and I know there's all those rumors about him and Green Lantern—"

"Linda . . ."

"--That's it. I'm done. I'M FINISHED! It's not worth it. Do you want to go lesbian with me, Marla? I mean, we wouldn't have sex or anything, and you'd have to be the man, because I don't know anything about carburetors or spark plugs or whatever. . ."

" . . . three . . . two . . ."

"But I would totally be okay with you making the decision to pull the plug if I suddenly became an eggplant. God knows my mother--"

"And . . . we're on."

Linda Park turned to look into the giant, square eye of the camera, blinked. " . . . huh?"

Marla, her rather robust blonde camera woman, mouthed '_live_' from around the viewfinder. Linda smacked herself in the forehead briefly, plastered on the Central City News Fluff Filler Piece Smile ™ that she had so perfected since college, and began to read the block print of he teleprompter.

"Thanks, Rick. This is Linda Park for KFMB, Channel 4 News, here on the streets of Central City--" There was someone behind her jumping up and down, yelling "Hi mom!" Linda kept the grin plastered on her cheeks. "--to see how our fine citizens are celebrating the time honored tradition of . . . Flag Day."

_I love my job, I love my job, I love my job_

The ground beneath her feet shook. The jumping teenager behind her paused and pointed heavenwards, "Hey, isn't that Hawkgirl?"

Marla swung the camera around, panning the sky. Linda started to get excited, _If I can get a superhero story out of this, I might—_

Then the ground didn't just rumble; it convulsed with a violent shockwave, sending Linda, her camera crew and the gaggle of rubberneckers off their feet. A brown mushroom cloud billowed up into the sky. Dust fell in an almost snowy drifts. Linda pushed her dark hair out of her face, "What the--?"

Behind her, another explosion. Somewhere off, maybe the other side of the city, a third. And there, at the intersection, something flew through the crossway with concussive force that sent the glass of the buildings surrounding bursting in a wave.

Linda raised her microphone to her lips, said dully, "It's seems we've had a new development."

* * *

Traffic ran at a steady fifty mph at 1:03 PM in Star City, California, with Saturday afternoon traffic. The suspension bridge across the city was slightly more congested with a fender bender, but it was clearing out smoothly. Cars trundled at a steady forty when a blur shot down the median, swerving wildly across both lanes. It crossed the path of an eighteen-wheeler lugging gasoline, and the driver instinctively slammed on the brakes and swerved. 

The sharp motion caused the trailer to swing wildly, plowing into surrounding cars, momentum sending the semi precariously onto just its left side wheels. It lurched that way, still rolling, maybe another ten feet before falling onto its side, sliding with a shrill metal scream. It hit the metal cables suspending the bridge and they bended with the weight, frayed until threadbare, snapped. The bridge sagged like a piece of fabric, the truck's cabin dangling over the sparkling ocean. Cars went skidding across the road, slamming into one another, tumbling through the break in the cables and over the bridge's edge.

The tanker's cylindrical trailer exploded. The middle of the bridge collapsed in twin slabs, in a ball of fire and oily, black smoke.

* * *

"Dagnabbit, turn it back!" 

"T'was garbage anyways. Why does the man not simply _slay_ the beast rather than saddling it and attempting to ride?"

""Sir, it is very rude to—"

"Shut up, Skeets." Booster Gold was flicking rapidly through the channels of the Rec Room's big screen TV, ignoring Vigilante's glare. Not that there was anything on, besides crap-o rodeo, kiddy cartoons and daytime talk shows. News, news, infomercials, news. He stopped upon recognizing the grainy, low-resolution transmission of a local channel broadcast.

There was something they didn't get in the 25th century: Jerry Springer.

"Ah'm gonna give yer lousy behin' two seconds tuh turn it back, pardner, 'fore we have ourselves a confrontation—"

It wasn't Jerry Springer, unfortunately, but Gordon "The Glorious One" Godfrey. He had regained steady popularity during the mistrust after the New Mexico incident and the Cadmus related propaganda, hadn't completely lost it since. Godfrey was still far from the prime time slot he'd held years previous, but he wasn't doing too badly for himself. Once his charlatan face filled the screen, Vigilante and Shining Knight both quieted. Vig made a face under the red bandana, crossed his arms.

"Ah hate this show. Seems right pert, folk 'loud ta go chompin at the bit when we're the ones savin the bacon when pushin comes right down to shovin—"

"Wouldst thou . . ." Shining Knight considered his internal dictionary of modern colloquialisms for a moment, ". . . turn it up?"

Booster Gold hit the volume up until Godfrey's voice filled the room over Vigilante's mumbling. Fire and Ice, who were passing through, paused and stood behind the couch, watching. Elongated Man looked up from where he was playing Brawlin' Bots with Creeper, who was tying to eat the yellow robot. Everyone quieted, all attention on the TV.

Godfrey had a guest with him, a small woman holding a photograph and weeping bitterly. Godfrey was smiling in a gratuitous way that was also decisively slimy, nodding as he sat beside her.

" . . . he just wanted to be like the Flash." The woman sobbed, "He idolized him, and . . . and . . ."

Godfrey made sounds of endearment as the woman dissolved into weeping before turning and looking pointedly at the camera, at his studio audience. "There you have it, folks! The Just-Us League, leading by example, forcing innocent working-class men like Arnie Shankman into a life of superspeed crime to support his habit -- and then death! Velocity 9 is probably a huge marketing scam, perpetuated by none other than the master!"

A picture of the Flash came up in the side window. "Why else haven't we seen the so called 'Scarlet Speedster' in the last two weeks? He's probably off spending the mint this is making him, while the people he so _claims _to protect, suffer!" Godfrey looked off screen for a second, "Do we have a clip, Jerry? Roll the clip!"

" . . . _because all that stuff you said about the League being in this for money isn't right."_

"_So you're saying that, unlike the rest of us -- who work hard to provide for our loved ones -- you do what you do for less selfish reasons?"_

"_Exactly. It's like Green Lantern explained to me earlier . . . we're above all that."_

"_You heard it folks! Straight from the source! The Just-Us League says 'We're better than you!'"_

Sir Justin snatched the remote from Booster Gold's hand, flicked the channel. "I will not listen to that . . . that _cretin_ slander the League's good name."

What they ended up on was the news. "Reports are coming in all over the country with incidents of super speed crime. While the source of the attacks is yet to be confirmed, ten casualties have so far been reported. . ."

Overhead, a klaxon began to blare, accompanied by J'onn's monotone voice, _"This is an Omega level alert. All Leaguers report to the monitor womb for instruction. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."_

* * *

Hmmm . . . sorry if the bit with Shayera and John was a little long winded, a little Dean Koontz off-on-a-tangent worthy, but I felt they were being a little . . . neglected. Which is immensely weird for me, since A: I really enjoy writing them, and B: This is a Wally story, first and foremost, and they are the 'Little Three' (I stole that from someone, my bad). 

But action! Huzzah! Finally! And much, much more to come! Hope it went all right, because I'm never sure about my sequences . . . but what can you do?

And Linda Park! Hurray! And a note on that: I was really disappointed how they portrayed our dear Linda in the show, because really, if Wally had kids with that Linda Park, who would you get? Nicer Paris Hilton, that's who. So I will attempt to effectively splice the dumb not-so blonde with the powerful and intelligent woman from the comics.

Okay, your favorite part and mine: REVIEW!


	8. Chapter 8: Blackout

Okay! Howdy. How's everyone doing today?

Well, this chapter was supposed to be quite a bit earlier, but due to some technical difficulties . . . I swear to god, you never know how imaginative you can be with about twenty different, highly frowned upon terms in the English language until you have Sprint as an internet provider . . .

Thanks to all who forgave the lack of Wally-ness last chapter and left me a review! If you look down, I have indeed remedied the situation.

* * *

**Inertia**

**Chapter 8: Blackout**

* * *

Wally didn't necessarily wake; he wasn't entirely sure he had been sleeping in the first place. When he finally regained some sense of time and space his arms were around his knees and his head was on them, and between his feet the shadows had shuffled and grown long. The phone was ringing off the hook. His neck ached like someone had shoved a railroad spike between the vertebrae. Straightening it took a full minute and hurt a hell of a lot more. 

"What time is it?" He muttered groggily, rubbing the back of his head, disoriented. He'd never had a hangover – his super fast metabolism kept him from being drunk for anything more than ten minutes – but if he had to guess, the sharp, rotten tooth throbbing between his temples had to be close. Wally looked up. He was still in the kitchen. Golden light filtered in through the small window above the sink. Across from him, the block green numbers of the oven clock read 7:48, the microwave above it 8:05.

Wally blinked slowly. It wasn't night, too light out for that. But he hadn't gotten back from the lab until . . .

He shot to his feet, bones creaking, knees popping like chestnuts, and stumbled into the living room, punched on the TV. The news was on. It was 7:57, Sunday morning. Wally had remained in the limbo most professionals would attribute to an acute mental break for nineteen hours. In that time, the world had taken a hand basket's ride straight to hell.

* * *

"Terrific, begin contacting all of our reserve members." J'onn could feel the apprehension, the alarm rolling from the group of superheroes congested in the monitor womb in a concentrated, massive wave and fought to keep himself guarded against it, his mind steady on the task at hand. Answers and delegation could begin after they secured the twenty-or-so members in costume and on the ground, as well as the other countless reserve associates and non-league familiars, many of whom possessed no commlink or one that was turned off. Even after Nightwing's heinous attack, they had continued to release heroes at the event of a dire call, operating on the belief that, though one member of the League and a close non-member had been attacked, they were isolated events. At the time, they had little other choice. Super villains were still attacking, major disasters were still putting people in danger; they took feasible precautions and continued to operate as the world's police force. 

They could no longer afford such naiveté.

John's call to the Tower from Central City had been the first, and it was as if his was a key stone knocked loose; in hour following an avalanche of incidents came flying across the communication stream – most of which consisted of a reckless, sudden speedster shooting through some city at mind numbing velocity.

There were other crimes, of course. Robberies held the highest total, executed in the time it took for an alarm to be activated and the police notified.

Most pressing in his mind, however, were the attacks.

The teleporter flared. Stargirl and STRIPE appeared in its passing light, the bigger figure supported by the girl. Most of the STRIPE armor had been stripped away on the arms and legs of the suit, the chest broken and propped open like a broken barrel ring, revealing clothing and skin stained with blood. The helmet of the suit was crushed in as if made of tin; blood dribbled out of the seams. Courtney was screaming, sobbing. The medical personnel instantly responded, flocked towards them like crows and began removing the armor from Pat Dugan's body with hand held lasers. He was the third to have come up in such a state, not including Nightwing.

J'onn touched a green, long fingered hand to the panel, initiating a universal line through the commlinks. Terrific was typing rapidly at the computer adjacent to the Martian, pulling up names and information on the others.

J'onn spoke calmly into the open airway, betraying none of the dread detained just barely beyond his mental floodgate. "Attention all active Justice League members—"

* * *

"_--this is an Omega level alert—"_

"Hey, Dinah?" They had heard the explosion halfway across the city, and even with the distance between the accident sight and Ollie's apartment, the floor had shaken as if an overloaded truck had gone speeding by. The developed internal disaster alarm in the both of them had activated, and they were costumed before the story that Star Bridge was half in flames, half sinking into the bay had even interrupted the weekly weather report. Legal speed had gone by the wayside on their efforts to reach the grounds, and Dinah was using every ounce of her superior driving skills to weave her motorcycle through traffic like a sowing machine dialing a piece of thread.

They streaked past shrieking police cars, ambulances and fire trucks, all of which tooted their horns in recognition and gratitude. They had just reached the freeway and she could see the pregnant black billow of smoke touching the horizon. So focused on not smearing them against a minivan going seventy against her near one-hundred, ears padded with the insulation of her helmet, the roaring of the vehicles and wind around them, she didn't hear her passenger. Only his insistent tapping on her shoulder broke her focus.

"What, Ollie?" She shouted, head arching back towards him, eyes not leaving the road. She swung the bike wide to avoid a Hummer, shot ahead of it, glided over two lanes.

"Can this thing go any faster?"

"Why?" She cast a fleeting look over her shoulder, swerving the motorcycle slightly and unconsciously in the direction of the motion.

Behind them were six lanes of spotted traffic, semis and pedestrian vehicles whose chrome glinted blinding white in the afternoon sun, invisible waves of heat distoring the air above the beached roadway. At first she didn't see, her head pivoting between the road in front of them and that behind so rapidly it was giving her whiplash. She was about to yell another, aggravated _"What?"_ when the eighteen-wheeler blocking most of her rear vision veered into the exit ramp.

She saw it. Just a dot, far off, maybe as much as a half mile. She looked back into their path and bulleted into the space between two other vehicles, crossing traffic. She turned back. At the distance it was impossible to tell, but her gut told her like little speck – to small to be a car, and if she were right, too _fast_ to be a car -- was gaining. Quickly.

And then she saw another. Two more, coming up on the original's flanks.

She glanced back into Ollie's grim face and nodded. "Hang on!"

Dinah gunned it. Ollie felt back a half an inch and grabbed her waist to keep himself planted.

They swerved into the centerline and tore between cars and a hundred twenty miles an hour, creeping up on one forty, rocketing and snaking around the trundling cars that were their satellites with mathematic precision and calculated reckless. Ollie didn't see any of the inches-from-disaster maneuvering. He was still looking over his shoulder.

"Dinah--!" She swung sharply, wrenched at the handles and threw her weight with the motion, almost leveled the bike, slid them beneath the undercarriage of a semi, their knees almost grazing the rapidly passing surface of the street. They rightened on the other side. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. She could see four figures clearly in her side-view mirrors, the sight incongruous between the threads of traffic, zeroing in on them in a V-formation like a pack of dogs mounting for the kill. The bike was close to its top speed, flying at 158 mph. Behind her, she felt Ollie shift, felt his hands slip from around her waist.

"Ollie, what are you—?"

"Just keep doin' what you're doin', pretty bird." Dinah grimaced and nodded, swerving in front of a van, shooting across into the other lane. The driver slammed on the brakes, lay on the horn.

Ollie planted both hands of the seat of the bike between his legs, praying that the buffeting wind wasn't going to knock him off like a giant hand to a fly. He pushed himself up, slid his legs sharply around to straddle the seat so he was sitting back to back with Dinah, hooked his feet on the footholds. He was now staring at the lanes of traffic they had just lay waste to.

"I can't believe that worked." He reached behind him, pulled his bow off his shoulder and drew an arrow. The figures, seconds before a half mile away, were maybe sixty yards behind them. Ollie couldn't see them in detail – they were moving so quickly they were all but colorful, fleshy blurs – but he imagined they were grinning.

Ollie leveled the arrow's tip at the first, closest figure and let it fly.

It missed. The figured ducked gracelessly to the side. The tip hit the roadway and exploded on impact, sending a shockwave through the street with enough force to send the pursuer flying off his feet, skidding and bouncing as cars swerved and collided to avoid him and the sudden fireball.

Thirty feet, the three remaining were nipping at their heels, swerving in and out of the traffic that had thinned considerably. News choppers thwocked in the distance. Ollie knew it would be over by the time they arrived, for better or worse. He lined up another target, released the drawstring with a sharp whisper of air.

At the last second the bike jerked to avoid a gator in the median. The bow eased, drawstring let, the arrow released premature and skewed useless into the air above them. Ollie swore and drew another, fired.

The net deployed from the tip of the arrow and caught speedster number two straight on, sending him flying in a broken mummy wrap. The other two were within hugging distance, close enough so Ollie could see the individual rivulets of sweat on their cracked foreheads, the twin sneers on their lunatic faces. They both lunged out with flying, super speed fists that Ollie couldn't see.

Dinah swung the bike hard right, then left. The fists missed the hero by breaths and the speedsters stumbled forward with the unfulfilled momentum. Ollie clubbed one across the face with his bow. His assailant stumbled but didn't lose his footing.

There was sudden shrill, mechanical shrieking and the acrid, charcoal smell of burning rubber. Ollie crashed into Dinah's back. He grabbed at her waist, the seat, almost dropping his bow in his scramble not to be thrown off. The bike skid sixty feet, twisted until sideways and banked until Ollie was sure it would either spill them onto the roadway at a hundred miles an hour or roll completely. The two pursuers shot past, fumbling almost comically with windmill arms to slow as the bike finally skid to a stop.

Dinah tore her helmet off and screamed.

The roadway ahead of them ripped to pieces from the force of it, sending the two speedsters off their feet and out of consciousness with concussive force. The sound lasted ten seconds. Even through the padding of the helmet, Ollie's head was spinning from the sound.

Dinah closed her mouth, looked back at her companion. He had flipped around, secured his hands firmly around her trim waist.

"Nice move."

"Thank you."

Sirens came up on their side and sailed by on the uninjured portion of road, the emergency response vehicles they had passed in their mad dash, now accompanied by others. Both heroes raised a familiar hand. Three police vehicles, an ambulance veered to the two unconscious bodies lying ahead. Six officers spilled onto the roadway, guns drawn.

"They were using the bridge to draw us out." Ollie nodded, pulling off his own helmet, retrieving is hat from his belt and planting it on his head.

"Looks that way, pretty bird." She turned to him, distraught.

"Do we stay and help and risk more people getting hurt with them trying to get at us, or do we run like cowards with the hope that they'll back off?"

"Hate to quote ol' loony, but that seems to be the question." Ollie shrugged helplessly. "And if you ask me, I don't think we'll be so lucky next time."

With a resigned sigh, Dinah touched her ear. "J'onn, bring us up."

* * *

"_--retreat to a secure area and call for immediate transport—"_

It was a beautiful outside. The perfect Saturday for fishing or swimming, or, if he could get enough of the guys together, playing some baseball. Walking down to the Gem Theater, getting some cokes and catching a monster movie double feature sounded like heaven. The sky had started out grey and droopy, threatening rain, but the clouds had passed unfulfilled and now the sky was a cloudless blue. The trees' leaves rustled with just the barest hints of a breeze, the flowers waved on their stalks like hands beckoning, and he could almost _see_ his baseball bat in his closest. Better, had just gotten ten dollars for mowing Mr. Morris' lawn for _the entire week_ and--

"Billy!" Billy Batson jolted from his daydream, his desk letting out a rattle as he jumped. His head swung to the front of the room. Mrs. Dalshaw, his teacher, was glaring at him from around her open CosmoGirl Magazine. "No daydreaming!"

"Yes, Ma'am. Sorry, Ma'am." The other detentioners around him snickered. Billy flushed and turned back to the open notebook on his desk, retaking his pencil in his hand.

_I will not be late to class. I will not be late to class. I will not be late to class. _He stared up at the overhead clock. 1:04. He wrote five more lines as carefully as he could, shaping each letter perfectly, crossing every T with a symmetrical line and every I with a perfect pinprick dot, erasing when he made a mistake until the blot was its near-original white. He looked back up eagerly when finished, positive it had taken _at least _five minutes to complete.

1:04, still. Billy cast another longing look out the window, sighed heavily, wistfully. Overhead, the intercom let out a static crackle.

_"Mrs. Dalshaw, please send Billy Batson to the office."_ Mrs. Dalshaw's face puckered as if she had tasted something sour, eyes narrowing behind her spectacles. She slapped her magazine down on the surface of her desk.

"What for?"

_"Phone call." _Billy was glancing between the speaker box in the corner and the ancient face of his teacher with welling excitement, practically humming in his seat when Mrs. Dalshaw nodded to him. A few of his surrounding troublemakers let out groans of jealously.

"Thank you, Ma'am," Billy leapt up and bolted out the door, his running steps echoing in the empty hallways. He didn't start wondering who would be trying to get a hold of him at the school – who would even know he was _in_ detention -- until he was leaning into the front office window.

"Billy Batson?" He nodded to the woman behind the desk and she handed him the receiver of the phone.

"Thank you." He cast a questioning glance at the thing as he took it, pressed it to his ear and called out a tentative: "Hello?"

His face bloomed into an expression of surprise.

". . . oh, hey! Uh-uh . . . do you--? . . . golly . . ." Trudy, the office assistant, turned back to her work. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Billy cast her a nervous glance, noticed as he began slowly sidling around the corner, the plastic phone coil trailing after him. His voice faded slightly as he disappeared from view. "Gee whiz, sure . . . okay . . ."

A minute later he was hurriedly handing the phone back. "Thanks, tell Mrs. Dalshaw I'm sorry but I gotta go!" Trudy took it, watched with bewilderment as he turned and burst out the double doors, bolting out of C. C. Binder Elementary School and into the empty bus loop, disappearing from her line of sight.

She could have sworn she heard him yell _"SHAZAM!" _She shook her head, replaced the phone on its cradle.

"Kids these days. . ."

* * *

"—_if approached, do not engage. Repeat, do not engage."_

Kara Kent was patrolling the skies over a decidedly uneventful Metropolis when something hit her from behind, hard enough to knock her forward almost a meter. She turned, rapidly scanning the skies around her, seeing nothing but a pan of skylark blue.

"What the--?" Another sharp impact, this to her chest, cutting open the famous insignia stitched into the fabric of her costume, then bursting in a puff of dry dust. From the corner of her eye she saw another smear racing towards her and dove to the side. It clipped her across the bridge of her shoulder, continued in an arc towards the crystalline water of the far-below bay.

"Great. I get a brand new costume and I can't even keep it for a week." The mumbling was low and distracted as her eyes scanned the ground. Between a small shopping district and a string of gas stations was a construction site, a large sign at the head proclaiming the patch of dirt and girders a theatre-to-be. A woman stood beside a pile of cement rubble, off from the other crowds of people that were passing or loitering in a way that was instantly identifiable. She was looking back at Kara, who was high above, only a speck, and with her microscopic vision Kara could see she was grinning like she had just gotten a good whiff of Joker-gas. As Kara watched, the woman picked up another fist-sized ball of compacted debris and hurled it into the sky like a baseball. Even if she had a good arm, it should have kissed the top of the building across the street and left it at that.

Instead, it whistled past Kara's ear.

Kara shot towards the Earth. The construction sight woman, in turn, started chucking rocks so fast her arms appeared only to be pinwheels. Kara twirled sharply to avoid a few, burned through the rest with heat vision. The red laser cut through the ground, towards the woman. Construction lady turned and booked down the crowded street, and Kara flicked off the light show as pedestrians started running and screaming and people started ditching their cars. Construction lady was running so fast she was creating a gale wind behind her, ripping telephone poles and traffic signals from their moorings, flipping cars like hotcakes.

But she wasn't _that_ fast. Kara, while probably one of the fastest woman alive, would never beat Clark or Wally in a foot race. But, then again, the grinning woman from the construction site wouldn't either.

Kara swooped low, came up flying fast on her side. "Stop!" Predictably, it didn't work. Instead, the woman lashed out with a fist that punched forward like a piston. Kara grabbed it, twisted it behind the woman's back and heard the grating crunch of bone-on-bone. Construction lady staggered, fell, fumbled out of Kara's grasp and ripped through the pavement of the street in a limp, raggedy doll flopping at sub-sonic speed.

She hit the Exxon station at the corner, tore through a Chevy and four self-serve pumps. First the station exploded, then the gas reservoir beneath. The shockwave sent Kara flying back quarter of a mile and leveled an entire city block, sent the surrounding five ablaze.

* * *

The three the media had come to lovingly call 'The Trinity' sat in a triangular fashion at the circular conference table. The other four seats were empty, J'onn in the monitor womb handling damage control, John and Shayera still presumably planet side. Bruce had one hand to his ear, listening to some unknown addressor intently as his two companions sat in tense silence, only the Martian's voice overhead to interrupt, and the content of the bulletins did nothing to ease the atmosphere. Clark was jittery with agitation as he waited for the Dark Knight to speak. After a strained minute, he broke. 

"Bruce, we don't have time--" Bruce took his hand from his ear, turned to the other two.

"Make time. Question found a Cadmus link. He's delving deeper into it."

Clark visibly stilled, stiffened. His face darkened, a growl rose from deep in his throat. "Luthor."

Diana nodded. "It would explain why Flash was attacked so early before the obvious play was in place. Only someone as arrogant as Lex Luthor would jeopardize his whole operation to get revenge."

"If not, it would be ridiculously coincidental, since Luthor was the driving financial force behind most of the Cadmus projects." Bruce said. "But we're not ruling anything out. All of LexCorp's records were seized when Luthor was imprisoned. I'll be looking into them to find any inconsistencies, as well as any conversation between Luthor and the outside world since his incarceration. But in the meantime—"

"Containment." Clark said. Bruce nodded.

"Until we can locate the main distribution source and Luthor's link to the outside world. All of our limited research points to Velocity 9 being a short-lived drug. If we can dry their well—"

"They won't have anything to run on."

"What about Carlton Duquesne?" Diana asked. She hadn't roughed their friend in prison up for nothing, after all.

"Duquesne's operation is big, but he doesn't have the sort of expertise to create and operate something like this and keep it so low on he radar for so long. If the Luthor link turns up empty we'll turn to his operation, but I'd rather rule Lex out of the picture first. We've got all of his records in hand. And based on our previous history – and Wally's attack – I don't think we'll be disappointed."

Diana conceded. "Speaking of Wally, has anyone heard from him?"

"Shayera and John are in Central City now, though they'll have to be recalled." Later, she would think that it really wasn't much of an answer at all.

"While I'm on recon, J'onn will be putting together rapid response teams, which the two of you, John and Shayera will be heading – as well as any other metas with leadership experience – to the most active areas. I don't want anyone going out without either an obvious advantage to superspeed or a top speed under Mach 1. Even then, make sure they have at least some experience with super speed combat. We don't need another . . ." Bruce cut off, his mouth twitched, his hands balled into fists. It was one of the strongest shows of emotion either of them had seen from the other man. Diana gently laid hand over his. He did not bat it away; contrary, his tension seemed to melt beneath the touch and he calmed.

"J'onn's calling up all of our active leaguers right now." Clark confirmed gently.

"Get in touch with the Titans and see if we can borrow Impulse, though they're likely already putting together their own lineup. We need Jay Garrick, Max Mercury, any other speedsters in the database. We've got reports coming in from all over the country."

"We just had a few from Europe and Asia, though we can't be sure if they have independent sources there as well, or if its Americans getting some exercise."

_"Superman, Wonder Woman, repot to the monitor womb." _Bruce nodded to the two of them.

"Go. I'll contact you as soon as I have something."

* * *

_"Reports of high speed crimes have been coming in from all over the country, from Metropolis to Gotham to right here in Central City. In the past hour, the Central City bank has been robbed twice, and all major jewelry stores have been cleaned out. Domestic crime is at an all time high, with reports of muggings, murders, robberies and rapes coming in at an uncontrollable rate. But the real question on everyone's mind is: 'Where is The Flash?'"_

Wally changed the channel, tight grimace on his face.

_"Fires have broken out in at least a dozen locations. All emergency workers have been overwhelmed by the crisis—"_

_"—super criminals have been taking advantage of the pandemonium caused by what we're now getting conformation is a drug known as Velocity 9—"_

The scene of a harried reporter cut to one of the Gotham City Bank, alight with the glow of a nearby fire. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, both with bags of cash over their shoulders, ran out of the building, across the cracked pavement and glass littered street. Harley paused to wave at the cameraman.

Wally changed the channel. He'd been watching for over an hour, and the consensus seemed to be that the apocalypse had arrived in the form of an injectable stimulant.

_"—the drug known as 'Velocity 9' seems to have adverse affects on all those who come under its influence, The instantly addicting formula appears to cause intense metabolic over stimulation, as well as premature, dramatic ageing. Street names for the drug are 'Speed Juice,' 'Lightning,' and, most ironically, 'The Flash'—"_

Wally turned off the TV with a sigh. On the counter, his commlink was buzzing like something possessed next to the unplugged land-line phone. In some far, unknown corner of his bedroom, Outkast was begging for attention. He moved to accommodate neither, sat on the floor with his legs crossed Indian-style beneath him, drumming his fingers on his knees.

_Don't even think about it,_ the little voice in his brain -- one that had remind nameless until he met GL -- piped suddenly, sharply, and Wally could almost see the 'What are you, an idiot?' glare and the wagging finger, _You aren't a superhero anymore. __There isn't a damn thing you can do, so let us handle this._

However,

_You don't have super speed, _Mini-John the internal voice continued,

he was a young man

_You're just a normal_

in near-peak physical condition

_Everyday_

with more experience with speed than any of those junkies running around

_Average_

who still managed, somehow, to be _incredibly_ sexy . . .

_Person._

Wally got to his feet, grabbed the vibrating commlink off the counter and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. If he was going to do this, he'd need a weapon.

* * *

Okay, not a huge amount of Wally this chapter, but that will definitely change as we progress. I hope to have the next chapter out by Sunday/Monday time frame, now that my lovely computer is back to being functional. 

And nothing speeds my writing up more than reviews! (Wink wink, nudge nudge.) Ha ha, kidding.

A little.

Review!


	9. Chapter 9: Mobilizaton

Woo hoo! An update that's (almost) on time! Mental high-five!

Thank you reviewers of last chapter! I heart you!

* * *

**Inertia**

**Chapter 9: Mobilization**

* * *

Bruce didn't immediately go transport back down to the cave. The League computers were on par with those in his personal domain, with more than a few programs developed by Terrific and Blue Beetle to render them possibly even more advanced, but he had always found it easiest to work how he found it easiest to live: alone. The WatchTower was manic with activity; the teleporters so exhausted they had begun to make a static mosquito whine. He made a mental note to take a Javelin as he made his way away from the womb, away from the conference room without turning to the bay, heading, in fact, the opposite direction. Calculative Batman was deadpanning somewhere that time was of the essence, every minute he spent up top was another minute a civilian lost their life, that— 

Bruce told him to shut up.

He nearly collided with Tim on the way into the MedLab room as the teenager pushed out the door while Bruce simultaneously attempted to enter. The second Robin had joked all the way to Dick's room upon arrival that he was going to draw on Dick's face with a marker while he was out. Now Tim just looked pale, drawn, sick. He pushed past Bruce, muttering some excuse; wrist over his mouth and eyes that were red, eyelids that batted like busy doors. Bruce touched his hair. Tim jerked away from him, rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Bruce sighed heavily, pushed the door open the rest of the way and stopped short of entering.

"I'll talk to him." Barbara Gordon said softly. She was sitting beside Dick's bed, petting his hair, holding the unconscious man's hand loosely. Two of the fingers were broken, splinted together with metal bands and gauze. Bruce's eyes fixed on that and couldn't seem to draw away. "He's done it a couple of times. He's never seen any of us this hurt before . . . he's having trouble."

She looked up at Bruce. Her crimson hair spilled over one shoulder, and under the harsh hospital light it was lackluster. She looked tired. Smudged mascara and the ghost lighting made raccoon rings beneath her eyes. "They just brought Dick back from surgery." She murmured. Bruce thought about taking the medical chart clipped to the edge of the bed and reviewing it, didn't. "They just bolted half of his ribs back together, when he's stable they'll . . ."

She didn't finish, instead glanced down and away from him, brushing a lock of hair from Dick's taped eyes. Bruce stood still in the doorway, a silent statuesque guardian, waiting for her to finish if she would. The hiss of the ventilator matched the artificial rise of Dick's chest, the rhythmic beeping parried lines across primitive screens and block numbers. In the busy, nervous hush that bordered on madcap, Bruce imagined he could hear the sound of the IV's rapid drip into Dick's body, and the sound was like rain on tin roofs.

"I never told him--!" Barbara burst suddenly, just as quickly silenced herself. The hand that was not twined with Dick's balled into a white-knuckled, trembling fist. She looked up at the figure in the doorway and he recoiled.

Rage made her pretty face monstrous.

"Find them."

Bruce nodded, swept away.

* * *

"_It's the same here in Jump as it is in the rest of the country."_ Cyborg's face filled the screen central in the monitor womb, did nothing to lighten it with its hard lines, not all of them metal-based. _"We've got Troia and Raven on the ground, but we don't dare send anyone—" _There was the sound of a far-off explosion. Victor Stone jerked to the side, the camera bucked and wobbled. The screen cut with a line of static. The signal regained integrity in the blink of an eye and Cyborg continued as if uninterrupted_. "—else after what happened to Nightwing. Impulse is with Max, but we've activated his communicator so he should be here soon."_ His deadpan expression fell slightly. _"The Titan Tower's been taking some hits, but our defenses are holding, for now. We're going to be sending the other kids up to you."_

"Agreed." J'onn said. "We will get back with you within the hour."

Cyborg nodded. J'onn touched the panel and the screen faded to black. Far below, the teleportation bay flashed with what was almost a strobe light. Blue Devil. Crimson Fox. Vixen, apparently right off the runway in what looked like a diamond bikini. Shayera and John, looking haggard and exhausted. J'onn gave the silent go-ahead to Ted Kord, who meandered around the civilian operating the teleporter and popped the panel up like a car hood. Blue Beetle hunkered down, hiding his face from sight; sparks and blue light began to emit from around the vertical console lid.

"Is that everyone?" He turned to Mr. Terrific. The other man was holding a cell phone in one hand, scrolling through a list of computerized names with the other on a smaller screen. The majority had been marked off.

"Close. There are a few we haven't been able to get, and it's going to be even harder since a lot of telephone lines are down. Crimson Avenger . . . Aquaman . . ." He looked at J'onn with some nervousness. "We haven't been able to get a hold of Wally, either."

J'onn paused minutely. "Keep trying." He called out to Diana and Clark in the conference room. They were out of time, could not spare any longer. His rust red eyes had just faded to hue when a harsh voice cut the air behind him.

"Where do you get off, pulling us out of Central City?" J'onn turned, startled. So involved in his work he hadn't sensed Shayera coming up on his back. The crowd in the room instantly quieted, stared with the curiosity of children ogling the standoff before a schoolyard brawl.

Shayera was caked in dust and grime, her hair matted, slight burns radiating pink from one shoulder, the feathers of her wings dirty and disheveled. She looked furious, teeth clenched under lips pressed in a firm line, emerald eyes blazing like twin green flames. J'onn looked behind her to John, who was in much the same physical state. His expression, though calmer and more controlled than hers, offered no help.

"Shayera," J'onn started lowly, gently, "Calm yourself."

She was having none of it. The hands on her mace tightened. "There are plenty of those nut cases running around where we were, J'onn, you had no right to--"

"There have been forty-one reported crimes in Central City. There have been two hundred and fifty seven in Metropolis, and three hundred nineteen in Gotham." He reached out and touched he shoulder with one green hand and she flinched under the grasp, looked away from him. Her shoulders sagged.

"He's fine, Shayera. Contrary to popular belief, Wally isn't stupid. For now, we have to look at the big picture." She muttered something under her breath and pushed away from him, but did not retreat. John continued to watch the Martian with brilliant eyes that were guarded and unreadable. J'onn did not back down from the glower.

_There are more lives at stake than one, John._

_I was a soldier. I know. That doesn't make the situation any easier to take._

Behind the emotional blockade, he felt the familiar, unconscious touch of Diana and Clark as they entered to room, reached out mentally to draw some comfort from their strength. He turned to the group of heroes, spotted the twin caps of dark hair near the back, pushing towards the front. It was finally time, then.

J'onn's voice bellowed over the thin stream of mutterings that had resumed once it seemed no fight would occur. "The following Leaguers are to remain for briefing and assignment. All others, check in with Mr. Terrific and await further instruction: Superman, Metamorpho, Plastic Man—"

* * *

Wally considered his supplies carefully, tapped his fingers in a rolling line against the laminate counter. Peanut Butter, loaf of Wonder, Peach Jelly. One knife. So what if he got a little jelly in his butter and vice versa? John and Dick both used two knives. He'd never understand the reasoning of it. 

Before . . . well, _before_, he would have used the entire loaf, creating a skyscraper PB&J that made double deckers, even triple deckers look like pawns to his well-exercised king. He'd made quite a few of them on the old WatchTower and gotten funny looks from D and Supes, sarcastic ribs from Shay and GL. On the new, expanded Tower, however, the cooks made the sandwiches for them.

Which was annoying. Instead of getting one huge sandwich, he got a dozen little ones, wasting valuable space for other foodstuffs. And they were always soggy. Didn't they know to put peanut butter on both pieces of bread to insulate the jelly and keep it from soaking through? And it was always grape jelly. No peach. Sometimes there was strawberry, but that was only a little better.

Aunt Iris could teach them a thing or two. And not just about sandwiches, the cookies in that place—

Wally shook his head, chasing off the distracted half-daydream. He carefully constructed two levels, added a third after a moment of thought. He'd weighed himself in the bathroom scale and, in the last few days, had actually _lost_ another pound, go figure. Not bothering with a plate (he didn't need one; the sandwich fit in his hand, which was kind of neat and a helluva lot less hassle) and grabbed a beer from the door of the fridge, went into his room and sat on the floor. He took a few bites of the sandwich, not necessarily because he was hungry but because he knew he should be eating something, set the drink unopened on the floor, balanced the sandwich precariously on top. Hand empty, he flipped up the trail of bed coverlet and reached under the bed frame.

He was never sure what the others did with their random super hero paraphernalia, but the stuff tended to build up like plaque: thank-you gifts from civilizations who's doom had been narrowly averted, gadgets and weapons from super-villains (though Bats tended to be their tech geek in that department, and spirited anything _interesting_ into some random file cabinet of the Batcave), keys to cities, artifacts from retired heroes, blah blah blah. There was a whole hall dedicated to the mementos in the bowels of the WatchTower, designated the _League Museum_, which housed an array of the aforementioned items, along with their own personal collection of alien plant and bacteria life. The Museum was a hook-on to the _League Library_, where they kept all the magical and alien books that couldn't otherwise be translated into binary, due to language and mystical properties complications, or something like that. Past the first couple of weeks -- after the new recruits had gotten over the kids-at-a-carnival mentality – the Library and Museum tied for least-used areas of the Tower. Wally was pretty sure the only reason the only reason everything wasn't in a couple of cardboard boxes in the storage dock was when the annual 'World Leader Tour' came around, about fifty different old people crapped their pants over the stuff in fifty different languages.

Or maybe it was all that stuff Supes said about 'preserving their legacy' or something like that. Wally wasn't sure. He tended to . . . drift off when Supes talked about stuff like that.

Either way, Wally never contributed. He preferred to hang onto the stuff, no matter how campy or junky or how, if some thief were to find this at the event of a robbery, his cover would be blown even more terrifically than if they came across the drawer full of Flash rings. After a moment of blind groping, his hand found what it was looking for: a Converse shoebox. He pulled out from beneath the bed. The top was coated with a thin layer of dust, the corners hugged by dust-kitties. He had taken precautions of course, guarded the shoebox against the shrewd eye of a potentially snoopy girlfriend by writing **PORN** across the top in black magic marker.

Wally grinned, admiring his own ingenuity. He pushed the slightly popped cardboard top all the way open.

There wasn't a whole lot in it. The golden laurel from when they saved Hippo's sorority island (precluding the foot in the ass un-invite, of course). Some of the shards of the red gem Mophir had given him to combat the snake boogies. The headband Solovar had given him to ward off mind-control. A Boom-Tube from Mr. Miracle. A Justice Guild of America ring – not the one he had been given, of course, that one had disintegrated with the rest of the illusion – one that he had found on eBay, one of the originals that kids could get back in the seventies for sending in an advertisement to the comic book company and a quarter. It cost him five bucks, and he'd gotten one for himself and John, then for J'onn and Shayera when they inquired.

Wally took out all the mementoes, one by one. Nostalgia washed over him, coaxing a smile to his mouth and melancholy clenching in his guts. He mused over them only for a few moments before setting them in a semi-circle on the floor around him. The rest of the stuff was more standard, weaponry from his more colorful rouges. One of Boomer's boomerangs, some fake dog turds from the Trickster, a handful of 4x4 mirrors that once belonged Mirror Master's kaleidoscope gun (there a funny story behind that). Three of the Top's trick tops. A metal capsule from an extraterrestrial electrical being named Kilg/re, a guy that looked like he had taken a bath in quicksilver, with an ability to control electrical systems that made Livewire look like a spark plug.

Wally paused over this one, pinched the capsule between his fingers and held it up to the light. There was no seam, like a normal pill. Fighting Kilg/re had been his first real case after Barry died, one of the few he handled solo before the League. The weirdo had started off taking over machinery and attacking him with it, had escalated into infiltrating the power systems of all of North America. Wally had been forced, of course, to kick its ass, and with some help from Cyborg had orchestrated a nationwide power outage to put a damper on the alien's parade. And in one of the weirdest plays to date, the guy had _given_ him something upon his defeat, before vanishing into who-knows-where.

Not that Wally even knew what it did. He'd tried breaking it open and the damn thing was indestructible. He'd buried it, heated it, vibrated it at sonic speed, and since come to the conclusion that Kil-whatsis was off somewhere laughing his ass off and Trickster could definitely get some pointers from the guy. Hell, he'd even tried eating it.

Needless to say, he had it back.

Wally set it on the floor with the others, came to the last item in the box. He removed it with reverence, careful not to let any of the parts come unfolded and trail on the floor. He held it to his chest, the outward facing symbol pressed against where he had worn his own.

It was not the suit Barry had died in. That had been buried at the Flash funeral in an otherwise empty coffin. Wally didn't want that one, anyways. He'd been the one to find it after, and . . . and . . .

He didn't want that one.

It was, however, one of the few the second Flash had left behind after his death. Iris had two, Jay had one, and Wally was pretty sure there was one on display in the dumb _League Museum_. He had the last. He'd borrowed it when it came time to fashion his own suit, to put on the legacy and try to fill the golden boots, and he'd kept it since. He didn't think Iris minded.

Wally thumbed the fabric absently, leaned back to rest against the mattress side and frame of his bed. He'd changed the belt design, darkened the color to make it more streamlined. Removed those stupid little foot ornaments.

Wally barked out a distracted laugh. Man, had he gotten a ration of shit about that.

He didn't take Barry's costume out very often. It was like . . . well, he'd never been very religious, but he imagined it was like the family bible, the one that only came out when there was a tornado alert on the news or word came the Uncle Lester had suffered a stroke. Wally had only taken it from its crude hiding place a few times before, the first after the Thanagarian Invasion, which was the first big thing he'd had to deal with on his own, the first time he'd had to face the betrayal of a friend. The second was after Bart came (and he'd _yelled_ at the damn suit, and if that wasn't the most psychotic/pathetic thing he'd ever done, he wasn't sure what was) and the third was when he'd almost been taken into the Speed Force.

"The Speed Force." Wally murmured. Not exactly a creative title but an appropriate one. He was the first to return, the first to confirm it's fabled actuality, he first to put a name to it. The Speed Force, a force that was both a sentient being and not, one with no discernable motivations other than to dole out the tricks and ride with the game before, on the turn of a dime, it seemed, to trade the chips for cash. Wally could still _feel_ it, and that was worst; worse than the fact that time that seemed to slip through his fingers like smoke, worse than lying awake at night with a belly that _wasn't_ grumbling, worse than watching the world pass by and wondering when it had gotten so damn _fast_. He felt like a tropical fish, plucked from the ocean and planted in an aquarium with a clear view of the beach. He could still feel it, and it felt close enough to touch, and every time he tried there was a glass wall that bent his groping fingers in.

Though, he thought, on some level he might be grateful. Velocity 9 had just extended his life expectancy substantially. Another truth of the system: speedsters lived fast, died young. The power they had – and Wally was just finally coming to realize the ramifications, since his fight with Luthor/Brainiac – was almost limitless in potential, had no real weakness, but came not with a monkey but a damn succubus on the back. He had used his power with the knowledge that it would inevitably, eventually, destroy him.

And in some really messed up way, Wally was okay with it. It was morbid and terrible to say, but he had come to terms with life and death pretty early on. Maybe it was the result of his adolescent mentality – live like a bus is going to cream you tomorrow; life's a game nobody wins, better enjoy it while you can, all that jazz – or the root of it. Because from the moment the lightning hit the tray in the Central City Crime Lab some ten-plus years before, the moment he was given an electrically charged chemical shower, death came knocking and said, "Look, kid, you're going to die before you get any discernable gray hair, and certainly before wrinkles, but you're going to die saving the world, and the show is going to be _spectacular_."

What more could someone want? And yeah, maybe Wally did want to go out like a hero and not like Jack from PR who had a heart attack in the parking lot, and maybe he did want to follow in the footsteps of the man who had been more a father to him than Rudolph West ever had, right down to his last, vanishing steps. Maybe he did resent the other six for pulling him back from what Max called the 'Valhalla of Speedsters', for stealing that thunder.

Now look where he was.

"Rip-off." Wally shook the thought away and it abated, another reared with an undeniable truth. With that gone, what did he have? He didn't have a secret identity. Okay, yes, he was Wally West and he didn't run around with a big-ass sign around his neck proclaiming his extracurricular crime fighting.

But at the same time, he _did_. He was just as likely to walk into a door as Wally as he was the Flash. He cracked the same jokes in and out of costume, hit on the same women, made the same mistakes and beamed the same eight-thousand watt grin. Bats and Supes – the only other two of their original family that also maintained private personas – were completely different. Supes, always the bashful Kansas boy, went from being a force of unquestionable leadership and unshakeable strength, to being a _dork_. Bats . . . well, he _smiled_ when not in his kevlar and cowl, which, in Wally's opinion, said about all that needed to be said. Yeah, sure, anyone with half a brain might put together that Bruce Wayne was one of maybe ten people in the entire world that could afford the bat-gadgets and hey, Clark Kent bears a striking resemblance to the super-dude and why aren't they ever in the same place at the same time?

The suspicions would be quickly dismissed, however. The two had the dual personality thing down so well it was unnerving, and probably not entirely healthy on a few levels. Wally, on the other hand, found his only reprieve of secrecy in patrolling _two_ cities, and that the cowl he wore covered everything but his mouth. If he tried to pull the magical on-glasses, off-glasses thing, he'd be found out in an hour. Maybe half that, if it were a slow news day.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was that Wally West wasn't so much the Flash as the Flash was Wally West. Linda had been the first girl he had gone out with as _Wally_ in ages. The fact that he hadn't been seen on the WatchTower in _two days_ was what alerted them to his trouble. And when not sending the required forty hours at work, he was at the orphanage, at city hall, at bank and museum and mall openings, spending time with Dick and Roy, comparing super-hero notes. Or, of course, off saving the world.

He had never realized before how much he neglected one in favor of the other; how he so reveled in his extraordinary life he forgot to keep a solid anchor in normalcy. Sure, if Supes was everyone's best friend and Bat's was everyone's worst nightmare, then Flash was just the every-man. And maybe that was the problem. The Flash and Wally West were so closely intertwined they had become interchangeable, and one without the other was just a mousetrap without a spring.

_It would have been better if . . . _

The distracted thought, rising from some depth as a breathless whisper made Wally jump as if he'd been shocked. "If what?" He muttered in a low, throaty voice. "_If what?!_"

There was no answer. The small tide and ebbed back to whatever dark mind-closet had birthed it. Wally was shaking, found errant moisture on his cheeks. He clutched the Flash suit, curled around it.

"What am I thinking?" He moaned. "God, what am I even thinking?"

Overhead, the lights flickered. Wally blinked, scrubbed the back of his hand absently at his face, looked up. The lights waned in and out, then died completely. In the other room, the once chattering TV went silent. Wally saw his cell phone lying across the floor, had long since acclimated himself to its incessant ring, picked it up, looked at the display.

9:27. He'd spent the better part of a half an hour reminiscing. Wallowing. Wally shook his head in something like disgust, jammed the phone into his pocket with the communicator. _Half an hour_, he chastised himself silently. _How much damage could they have done? How many people could they have killed? Half an hour, half an hour, you might as well have given them ten years. _

There was time for self-pity later, to make sense of and deal with all of these epiphanies after Velocity 9. For now, he had a job to do, and there wasn't any gray area in that.

With loving delicacy, Wally replaced the Flash suit. Smoothed the fabric into lineless repose back in the box. He then turned to the contents on the floor, squinting in the somewhat dim light. He grabbed the boomerang, tucked it into the waistband of his jeans and straightened his shirt over it, hoping he didn't somehow set it off and blow his nuts to Chattahoochee. Tucked the three tops into a pocket, though he wasn't sure what they did (you think the guy could put a label on them.) After sweeping over the objects once more, he took the Kilg/re pill and tucked it away with the phone and the commlink. You never knew, after all. He was, however, going to have to make a stop before he really got down to any business.

He replaced the items in the Allstar box, closed the lid, slid it back to its place under the bed. He went to his closet, pulled out his temporary resort and exited.

He stalled in the doorway, glanced compulsively over his shoulder at the bed, the spot he knew the box was under.

"Hope I make you proud, Barry."

* * *

Okie-dokie. More of a filler chapter here, but for those of you who wanted Wally . . . Voila! Five pages worth, and angsty Wally no less. Aww. We'll get back to the action next chapter. 

As for when that's going to be . . . I'm heading down to Florida for the next eight days, so plenty of time to write! Wee. Unfortunately, wether or not I update in said time pivots on wether or not the hotel I'm staying in has WiFi. Of that, I have no idea.

For fans of the comic: Anyone about to flame me about the spelling of a certain villain's name . . . well, FF doesn't allow for special characters, so I improvised. Believe me, I was uber pissed when I figured that one out. And I know I changed the history of all that quite a lot. If you haven't noticed, this really isn't following the comic very much at all. That's what makes it fanfiction. :)

As always, Review!


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